Russell McGregor reviews Iain McCalman, John Büsst: Bohemian artist and saviour of reef and rainforest (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2024). 264pp + 8pp insert of colour and monochrome illustrations. ISBN 9781761170096 (Paperback), RRP $36.99.
Iain McCalman’s biography of John Büsst carries endorsements by a scintillating array of Australia’s historians. They’re well deserved, for this is not only an insightful account of an individual’s life but also an astute exposition of environmental activism on behalf of one of Australia’s greatest natural wonders – or perhaps that should be two.
John Büsst was prominent among those who, in the 1960s, fought to save the Great Barrier Reef from mining and other destructive exploitations. For that, he is reasonably well known today, at least in north Queensland. Less well known are his efforts to protect the rainforests in an important part of what is now the Queensland Wet Tropics. In fact, Büsst began his career as an environmental activist by campaigning to save a swathe of lowland rainforest at Mission Beach from the depredations of the Australian Army. For this, he earned the sobriquet ‘Bingil Bay Bastard’, intended disparagingly by the army but a badge Büsst wore with pride.
His flaunting the ‘Bingil Bay Bastard’ badge gives a good indication of Büsst’s character. He had, McCalman notes, an ‘earthy knockabout persona’ (p.173). Yet he came from a privileged background. After childhood with his wealthy Bendigo family, he boarded at Melbourne’s elite Wesley College before winning a scholarship to Melbourne University’s Queen’s College. But other urges impelled John Büsst and his sister Phyllis elsewhere. Drawn by the allures of Melbourne’s bohemian art scene, in 1930 they dropped out of university and committed themselves to the artistic doctrines and libertine lifestyles of Max Meldrum and Colin Colahan.
Well, they were committed for a while, before becoming disciples of an alternative artistic coterie led by Justus Jorgensen. Through the 1930s, Büsst was a significant figure in Melbourne’s art scene. Among other things, he had a major role in the design and construction of the Great Hall at Montsalvat artists’ colony. Gradually, he moved his artistry away from painting and more into constructing buildings, furniture and other tangible objects – with good reason, it seems. The only example of his paintings in this book is a rather bilious self-portrait of a self-conscious bohemian. At least it shows why Büsst turned his creative energies to building with mudbrick and stone rather than daubing on canvas.
McCalman’s account of Büsst’s time with the Melbourne bohemian set is brilliant. With Büsst at its centre, he takes us on a tour through the unconventional and often flamboyantly dissolute artistic cliques of the 1930s, revealing both their achievements and their absurdities. Seeking something different, in 1940 the Büsst siblings transferred allegiance to another artists’ colony on distant Bedarra Island, off the coast from Mission Beach in north Queensland. There, Büsst began his transformation into an environmental activist.
McCalman recounts Büsst’s career as an activist with obvious endorsement of his environmental agenda, balanced with fidelity to what the written sources and recollections of participants reveal about the man and his milieu. His research is thorough and his presentation of it clear and succinct. McCalman is a good storyteller, and Büsst’s life offers plenty of opportunities for good stories. Among them, inevitably, is how Büsst’s conservationist campaigning was boosted by his personal friendship with Prime Minister Harold Holt, a former schoolmate from his Wesley College days. (It seems that people of Büsst’s background can work the old school tie even when roaming a tropical isle clad only in a sarong.) Partly through having friends in high places, Büsst’s campaigning was eventually successful, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park being created in 1975. Büsst didn’t live to see it. He died of throat cancer on 5 April 1971.
Excellent biography though it is, McCalman’s book stumbles on two points. One is the author’s apparent unfamiliarity with the physical environment that Büsst loved and made his home. The other is the disconnect between the two sides of Büsst’s character flagged in the subtitle, ‘bohemian artist and saviour of reef and rainforest’. I’ll discuss each of these in turn.
According to McCalman, Bedarra Island is ‘around 4 kilometres out of the town of Tully’ (p.59). Elsewhere, he describes Tully as a town ‘immediately opposite Bedarra Island’ (p.83). In fact, eighteen kilometres of land plus seven more of sea separate Tully from Bedarra Island. A common and beautiful denizen of the region is the Ulysses butterfly. McCalman refers them as ‘giant green and blue Ulysses butterflies’ (p.89). In fact, Ulysses butterflies are electric blue and jet black, without a hint of green. McCalman discusses Büsst’s studies of the ‘rare grey-backed swiftlets’ that nested on Bedarra Island (p.103). In the North Queensland Naturalist article to which McCalman refers, Büsst himself called the relevant species ‘Grey Swiftlet’, which was once a vernacular name for what is now the Australian Swiftlet. They are not rare but abundant and thousands can be seen, zooming over fields, farms and forests throughout Queensland’s Wet Tropics.
These are, of course, minor errors. But there are too many of them, and they jar in a book that celebrates a man’s passionate devotion to a particular place and the wildlife that dwelt there. Perhaps it’s because I’m a former north Queenslander (and a birdwatcher to boot) that I’m taken aback by McCalman’s simple errors of geography and natural history. Perhaps non-north-Queenslanders (and non-birdwatchers) won’t even notice. But a writer who seeks to illuminate the emotional and experiential motivations behind an environmental activist’s campaigning is beholden to get the environment right. Ulysses butterflies and Grey Swiftlets and the forests and seas that lie between Tully and Bedarra Island mattered deeply to Büsst, so they deserve to be accurately represented in his biography.
Regarding the book’s second stumble, McCalman doesn’t quite manage to explain why Büsst made the transition from dissolute bohemian to zealous saviour of reef and rainforest. Was it part of a yearning to find meaning and purpose in life? Did the beauty of Bedarra and Bingil Bay seep so deep into his soul that he could not bear imagining their destruction? Did he outgrow the naïve innocence of his arty and transgressive youth? These possibilities are hinted at in McCalman’s biography but they remain tantalisingly on the edge of exposition.
It’s clear that botanist Len Webb played a big part in the transformation. From Webb’s ecological advocacy, McCalman writes, Büsst ‘discovered a new and formidable life purpose’ (121). It’s clear, too, that aesthetics connect the two parts of Büsst’s life to some extent. His arty phase was self-evidently aesthetically orientated, and his appreciations of reef and rainforest were more aesthetic and emotional than scientific or intellectual, although he was careful to school himself in the latter areas so he could effectively mount the conservationist case. But continuities between the two personas in the subtitle are not developed, so we’re left with a biography in two parts, with little connecting tissue between them.
Indeed, McCalman highlights, apparently deliberately, the disjunctures between the two personas. He cites, with apparent endorsement, playwright Betty Davies’ characterisation of the young John and Phyllis Büsst as ‘spoiled “leisure-class” brats’ (p.22). It seems a fair characterisation. From their privileged background, the Büsst siblings plunged into the bohemian scene apparently thinking only of themselves and their own gratifications. McCalman depicts them as so self-absorbed that in the early 1930s they didn’t notice their own parents’ misfortunes in the Great Depression. His depictions of the reef-and-rainforest-saving Büsst are of a dramatically different man. Explaining why, late in life, relations between Büsst and his wife Ali became strained, McCalman notes that ‘John’s relentless commitment to saving the Reef and rainforest had probably made him a dull companion’ (p.213). That’s an understatement, but it shows how far Büsst had moved from the hedonism and solipsism of his younger self.
But perhaps that kind of transformation – from solipsistic youth to would-be righter of the world’s wrongs – is not so unusual. Or perhaps Büsst’s life really was lived in two parts, with only weak connections between his years as a dilettante and dissolute artist and his career as a warrior for reef and rainforest. Perhaps it’s wise for the biographer not to strive too hard to connect things that may have been only weakly linked or for which evidence is scant. In any event, McCalman has written a fine biography that illuminates both the man, John Büsst, and the worth of his legacy. There’s a touch of hero-worship, but this is balanced by a willingness to expose the unappealing facets of Büsst’s character.
One question goes unanswered: why does the umlaut endure? John Busst, as he was christened, added the umlaut at some time during his youth, in the mistaken belief that his father’s family was German. McCalman himself calls it ‘an affectation’, adding that later in life ‘he quietly stopped using the symbol’ (p.19). Perhaps it’s time we all did.
