had to go to Adelaide to get married) our Malcolmwas promoted to Banquo and I was promoted toMalcolm. So it was the Prince and the Porter for meand Val.We soon became firm friends. Up at Mt Tamborinehe introduced me to Judith Wright and soon, whenI started teaching at Murgon State High Schoolin 1958, I found myself teaching the poems ofpeople I knew. During my four years in Murgon, Valvisited the school and the town hall to give talks onAustralian poetry for the Commonwealth LiteraryFund. These talks took him as far as Mt Isa.Val was a great traveller – the Universityof London (where he took his Doctorate ofPhilosophy), the University in Venice (where he wasAustralian writer-in-residence, hosted by Australia’sBernard Hickey) and even the Opera House inChile, where he was a judge of an internationalopera competition, sitting beside the great Italianmezzo Fedora Barbieri.But, as far as he travelled, Val’s core was alwaysQueensland, not so much Brisbane as the seaportof Gladstone where he grew up and where hisfather was a fisherman and a ‘wharfie’.At sea, Val relished the waters in and outsidethe port of Gladstone, though as a sailor on hisfamily’s boats, the Valhalla and the Jean, he washappy that his father (nicknamed ‘Michael’) and hisbrother Paddy had pride of place.After high schooling in Rockhampton, Val workedas a clerk for the Gladstone Council before the waragainst Japan saw him in New Guinea at MilneBay. He wasn’t in the front line. He had time for his‘non-day’ job – writing poetry. He was posting it toThe Bulletin in Sydney, whose poetry editor wasthe great Doug Stewart. His ‘Songs of the EastCoast’ (the opening lines of which can be read inhis footpath-plaque near the corner of Adelaide andAlbert Streets), written in New Guinea’s Madangin 1944, achingly evokes the raw-salt reality andthe mythic mystique of Gladstone, its harbour andits nearby hills that ‘bite the blue skies’. That lineI quote was used about six decades later for theopening exhibit of the Museum of Brisbane in theCity Hall. When Japan surrendered, Val was postedto Singapore to help in the repatriation of prisonersfrom the notorious Changi Jail. While Val was there,a strange thing happened. In mid-afternoon theprison’s bell started madly chiming for midnightand more –… only after fifteen notesDid silence grip its tongueVal turned this bizarre event into a gripping ballad,‘Changi Chimes’, which I find grabs schoolstudents today when I am asked to performAustralian poems on visits to schools. Moreover,an Italian school teacher, Aldo Magagnino, ofPresicce, near Lecce in Southern Italy (the lateBernard Hickey was Professor of English in Lecce),has translated this and others of Val’s poems intoItalian. They are being published in the Italianmagazine, crocevia.Val’s international impact was felt when he wasan Australian opera critic for the London-publishedmagazine, Opera. Three volumes of his own poetryhave been published, plus essays for the BritishJournal of Aesthetics and the Foundation forAustralian Literary Studies. Last September, afterhe had left his Indooroopilly home for SinnamonVillage, he signed permission for two of his poems(‘Mooring Buoy’ and ‘Shipwright’) to be publishedin the Penguin Anthology of Australian Verse,2009, edited by John Kinsella. This book is nowpublished.I regard one of Val’s most significant works tohave been his collaboration with Judith Wrightand Ruth Harrison on the publication (by Angusand Robertson in 1970) of previously unpublishedpoems by John Shaw Nielson. Val hated literarypretentiousness. Thus he was a great admirer ofthe unacademic lyrical poetry of Shaw Nielson. Iremember his great enthusiasm when he told meof a play with music by Darryl Emmerson (ThePathfinder) based on the life and poemsof Nielson.Val’s enduring monument is the Arts Queenslandannual Val Vallis prize, set up by then Arts MinisterMatt Foley, for an emerging poet.Val was survived by his sister, Mrs TopsyHamilton, but sadly she also died recently. Topsy’sdaughter, Susan, is a prominent Professor andadministrator at the University of Queensland.As we are now in what is called Queensland’sSesquicentenary, it is worth recalling that in theCentenary Year, 1959, Val was co-editor (with RSByrnes) of a monumental and vastly comprehensiveanthology – the Queensland Centenary Anthology,which included poems, plays, short stories, essaysand extracts from novels.Paul Sherman is a poet, actor and former highschool teacher. Born in Brisbane and a Universityof Queensland graduate, he has acted in numerousShakespearean plays. He has travelled widely,delivering lectures on Australian poetry, and hispoems have been published in various anthologiesand journals. At the 2008 Queensland PoetryFestival he read the poems of his friend, Val Vallis.13Fryer <strong>Folios</strong>
What’s Newin Fryer LibraryCollectionsIn the last few months of 2008 theFryer manuscript collections continuedto expand with the acquisition of anumber of significant new collections.The literary collections were enhancedwith the addition of 23 boxes ofpapers of Australian novelist TrevorShearston. The collection includesmanuscripts of his first three bookspublished by University of QueenslandPress (Something in the Blood (1979),Sticks that Kill (1983) and White Lies(1986)) as well as manuscripts forsubsequent novels, short stories andscreenplays, and associated researchmaterial and correspondence. TrevorShearston’s main interest as a writerhas been in documenting throughfiction the relationship of Australians toPapua New Guinea, so the collectionadds to the wealth of material held inFryer Library relating to Papua NewGuinea, particularly the records of thePapua New Guinea Association ofAustralia (UQFL387). This collection hasbeen growing rapidly, with numerousdonations by members of the PapuaNew Guinea Association of Australia,acquired through the tireless efforts ofDr Peter Cahill.Fryer Library’s Australian literaturecollections were also enhanced with thedonation of two letters by David Maloufwritten to University of Queenslandalumnus Keith McWatters, and to hiswife after Professor McWatters’ death.This unique donation is written aboutin more detail elsewhere in this issueof Fryer <strong>Folios</strong>, as is the book madespecially for Father Leo Hayes by LilianPedersen, Gleanings from AustralianVerse.Also received were 22 boxes of researchmaterial on Queensland writers,collected by Dr Stan Mellick during hisresearch for the Oxford Literary Guideto Australia (1993) and clearly arrangedinto biographical data, town-relateddata and textual material by the authors.These papers were added to the existingcollection of Dr Mellick (UQFL108).One of the subjectstrengths in theFryer Librarycollections is thehistory of tradeunions and leftwingpoliticsin Australia. InDecember theCombined UnionsChoir, celebratingtheir twentiethanniversary,donated to FryerLibrary theirrecords since 1988in a collectionof files andphotograph albums. The collectionwas presented to senior librarystaff at a handover ceremony atthe Queensland Council of UnionsBuilding in South Brisbane. TheQueensland Council of Unions alsoadded a further 16 boxes of papersto the extensive Trades and LaborCouncil of Queensland Archive,bringing the total number of boxes inthe collection to 653. It is the largestmanuscript collection in Fryer Library.Also received in the latter part of theyear was a collection from FrancesClark of papers, correspondence,photographs, newspaper cuttings andephemera relating to Frederick Thomasand Elizabeth Brentnall and their family,in particular their daughter Flora Harrisand grand-daughter Noela Denmead.It includes photographs and papersrelating to Daphne Mayo and her workon the Queensland Women’s WarMemorial in Brisbane in the early 1930s.The Fryer Library collections includea surprising amount of realia. Thisis particularly true of the Hayescollection, which contains curiositiessuch as a travelling medicine chest,as well as stamps, coins, and religiousparaphenalia. The collection wasrecently enhanced with the donationof a silver-plated napkin ring, whichwas presented to Father Hayes onAbove:Daphne Mayo putsthe finishing touchesto the fountain of theQueensland Women’sWar Memorial in 1932.Fryer Library, Papers ofFrances Clark, UQFL444,PARCEL 1January 200914
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