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ESCAPE TO ADVENTURE
Noel Monkman
First published 1956, Angus and Robertson, Sydney and
Melbourne.
Hardcover, dust jacket, 182 pages, mono and colour plates
throughout.
I swear I will read this book one day. The author was
an adventurer, and his escape to adventure included land activities as
well as ‘diving with an aqualung and camera'. He was one of the first in
Australia to shoot cinematography, and did so with Australian actors Charles
Tingwell and Chips Refferty. His speciality was macro and micro photography,
shooting much of the sequences for the American film The Sea Around Us.
We don't hear much of Monkman within diving circles but he is worthy of
a place as one of Australia'ss pioneer divers. The book is not rare, and
crops up in most second-hand stores.
From the front fly: Natural science and personal adventure
are blended in this richly entertaining book whose author is not only a
scientist and explorer but a brilliant photographer as well. Set mainly
in northern Queensland and on the Great Barrier Reef, Noel Monkman's adventures
are as varied as his curiosity is insatiable. He tells of the trapping
of crocodiles, of wild pig hunting, of turtles and their ways; he delves
into the strange habits of ant-lions, of cliff-dwelling bees, of hermit
crabs, of the spider Nephila —all in a manner both vivacious and precise.
And as an observer, above and below water, of the life of the sea the author
can have few equals. Diving with an aqualung and a camera, Noel Monkman
explores the coral reefs and the sea bed, observing the habits of marine
creatures, and taking films that have become internationally famous. Then
with his microscope, he reveals a fabulous world: animals and plants of
intricate pattern, the rare beauty of the minute life that composes plankton.
Dangers escaped and wonders revealed make this both an exciting and an
illuminating book. For Mr Monkman is an ideal raconteur, and superb photographs
accompany the text. |
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FROM QUEENSLAND TO THE GREAT BARRIER REEF - A Naturalist's
Adventures in Australia.
Noel Monkman.
Doubleday and Company, Inc. Garden City, New York 1958.
Hardcover, dustjacket, 182 pages, mainly mono photographs,
a few colour plates.
This book is identical in every respect to 'Escape to
Adventure' except for the placement of the photographs.
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QUEST FOR THE CURLY-TAILED HORSES.
Noel Monkman. An autobiography.
First published 1962, Angus and Robertson Ltd, Sydney.
Hardcover, dust jacket, 212 pages, mono and colour plates
throughout.
I confess to having opened the pages of this book for
the first time a few seconds ago for this ‘review'. So let me repeat what
is on the back fly:
‘This is a warmly personal story, charmingly told
by a scientist with an artist'ss eye for natural beauty. As readers of
Escape to Adventure will know, Noel Monkman's vast curiosity and enthusiasm
for the onders shown by the microscope enliven all that he writes about
them.' It goes on to suggest that this iss a rewarding and entertaining
book. I'll take their word for it as it is way down on my list of priority
reading. But Monkman was a pioneer, so it deserves to be read. The book
is far less scarce than Escape to Adventure.
From the front fly:
Now renowned for his underwater photography and for
his films ol marine microscopic life, Noel Monk-man describes his pilgrimage
from early childhood towards the goal of which the sea-horse became the
symbol. Presented in a series of vivid and moving scenes, this is the most
unusual story of a most unusual man. Only an individualist with courage
and determination could have surmounted the hazards and obstacles of this
quest lor scientific knowledge. His parents separated, the young Monkman,
in New Zealand, is in constant rebellion against the petticoat government
that is his lot - the dour grandmother, the grim governesses, the hated
older girls. But he escapes to swim and dive with the Maori boys ol Moeraki
by the sea; and he captures his first sea-horses, which are kept with other
sea creatures in an ocean pool. And so, with bedroom waterbottlc as magnifying
lens, he begins his career as naturalist and marine biologist. A long,
hard road lies ahead. Monkman is to be a photographer, a labourer, an actor,
a cellist, before he reaches his goal. But always the microscope is his
true instrument and science his true love - except for Kitty, his constant
companion and helper since their marriage over forty years ago. |
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GHOST FILMING
THE FILM-MAKING CAREER
OF NOEL MONKMAN AND KITTY GELHOR.
Husband and wife teams that
endure are rare in the ego-ridden world of cinema and television.
For more than thirty years, commencing in the early 1930s, Noel Monkman
and his wife Kitty Gelhor, embarked on a career in film production.
Monkman was the last male
descendant of a family of early European pioneers of New Zealand. Kitty
Gelhor was ofRussian/Polish ancestry and they were brought together in
New Zealand by careers in music. They emigrated to Australia, immediately
after the First World War, to study at Sydney Conservatorium of Music,
the only professional school of music in Australasia. The 'Con' as it became
known, had just opened in what had been the stables of Government House,
in the Botanic Gardens, adjacent to Macquarie Street, Sydney.
Monkman had endured a childhood
that would have left many another scarred. In Monkman's case, isolation
and privations taught him steely self-reliance and developed in him a love
of marine biology and a talent for photography and for music. For
years, his puritanical father fostered out the child to a succession of
boarding houses and families, to hide him from his mother and isolate him
from her ajudged evil influence. His mother had committed the sin, unforgivable
in the eyes of late Victorian New Zealand, of maintaining her career as
a musician and singer after
her marriage.
In Sydney, Monkman and Gelhor
made a career playing in the orchestras and ensembles that accompanied
the 'silent' cinema in the movie houses and, occasionally, backed international
stars such as Pavlova, on tour in Australia. Late at night, after work,
Monkman attended his laboratory where he developed techniques of microphotography
and micro-cinematography and made two experimental films, one on the life
cycle of the mosquito, the other on the aquatic organism, the hydra.
In their original form, at
least, these films have been lost. While scientific cinematography had
brought the couple into film production, it was not their exclusive interest.
Monkman was seen as arising talent in the film industry and was contracted
to direct two feature films. ‘Typhoon Treasure' (1938) was produced
for the Commonwealth Film Laboratories and ‘The Power and the Glory' (1941)
for Argosy Film, both Sydney-based companies. ‘Typhoon Treasure' made extensive
use of Queensland coastal and island locations, in lieu of New Guinea.
It was subsequently released in Britain in 1943 in a slightly abridged
version.
The Power and the Glory's
anti-Nazi themes and aggressive aerial combat scenes ensured that it attracted
an audience and received encouraging reviews when it opened at the Mayfair,
in Sydney, in April 1941. However, there were no further opportunities
to direct features during the general production hiatus caused by the Second
World War.
In the received history of
the Australian film industry, Monkman and Gelhor hardly rate footnote status.
This is because in part and, in Monkman's words:
"We won our way to financial
security by pioneering a new Australian business-ghost filming. We produced
film which we sold outright for immediate payment, and overseas buyers
put their names on them as producers and took the credit for having made
the films."
One must also consider that,
though Monkman directed two reasonably well received feature films, Monkman
and Gelhor's principal output was scientific, educational and natural history
film. Such films are held to demand more technical than creative skills
for their making and so, in the pantheon of film production fame, Monkman
and Gelhor's reputation remains out on the porch.
Noel Monkman died in May
1969, just as the Film Committee of the Australian Council for the Arts
was meeting to plan the revival of the film industry. In the seven months
leading up to Prime Minister John Grey Gorton's speech at the Australian
Film Institute awards, in Canberra, in December of that year, the framework
of the first phase of the federal governments' support for the Australian
film industry was designed. Monkman was survived by his lifetime partner,
Kitty Gelhor. She lived to see some of their hopes, in the 1930s, for an
Australian film industry, realised in the 1970s.
Copyright: Vincent O'Donnell,
Melbourne, 2002.
(With much appreciation
to reproduce this here).
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