A taut biography of the prolific, populist historian’s Victorian Youth and adventures into professional, long-form journalism specializing in mining.

Blainey’s dad, an itinerant Methodist minister who was reassigned every four years, effectively showed him an unusually broad perspective of the state during the interwar and wartime years, notably Ballarat and Geelong. Congregations and towns then were tightly knit; their merits may resurface. Later he hitched around New South Wales and Tasmania, before flying on assignment to Queensland, the Northern Territory, and Western Australia, such that by 30 he would have been better traveled than all but a few Aussies.

His big break was a scholarship to Melbourne’s Wesley College, paid for by a Ballarat banker who had previously left his dad’s church. Starting out a leftist, he realized he did not believe in the perfectibility of human nature. Burke’s Reflections advanced his course, though he hadn’t remembered reading it until rediscovering a schoolboy notebook. He did well at Melbourne University but left without taking a degree; it was later granted by an administrator going ‘behind his back’; later he returned as economics professor.

He liked visiting the country’s mining sites, particularly going underground, and following a successful corporate history of a Tasmanian company, saw ‘most’ of Australia’s pits. The profession was more prestigious in the 1950s through the 1970s, and skilled miners would have had a higher standard of living than British colleagues. A keen reader, he was equally skillful in capturing oral history. The surprise in writing Tyranny of Distance was discovering geography (distance) as a variable such as class.

• A Geelong fan. In the wartime era, only players wore team colors
• Every British visitor of distinction was mentioned in the newspaper

An enjoyable read, though yarns which once rang as unlikely later border on name dropping: at what point did he become the insider in outsider’s clothes? It would also be interesting to know more of his relationship with mentor Manning Clark, who tended (in Blainey’s view) to downplay Australian achievement.

NB: Try to spend less time at work but to work harder (more effectively)