H. A. Willis | |
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 Willis in 2013 | |
| Born | Howard Alan Willis 15 November 1948 Colac, Victoria, Australia |
| Occupation |
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| Period | 1967– |
| Notable works | Manhunt: The Story of Stanley Graham (non-fiction book; basis of the feature film Bad Blood ) |
| Children | 2 |
Howard Alan Willis (born 15 November 1948), is an Australian essayist, novelist, critic and editor.
The son of a Lands Department inspector in Victoria, Willis was born at Colac and grew up at Apollo Bay, Kyneton and Ballarat.
As a student at La Trobe University in the late 1960s, Willis was part of a group (which also included Philippe Mora, Peter Beilby, Rod Bishop and Demos Krouskos), that wrote and produced the first issue of Cinema Papers (October 1967). [1]
Willis subsequently lived in Darwin, followed by Auckland, New Zealand (1970–1980). While studying at the University of Auckland, Willis was a founding member of Alternative Cinema, an Auckland film-makers’ cooperative established in 1972. He contributed articles to and edited several early issues of that group’s journal, Alternative Cinema. Willis later (1976) wrote an in-depth account of the New Zealand film industry for Cinema Papers. [2]
Returning to Australia, Willis lived in rural Tasmania. In late 1981, he settled, with his wife and two young sons in Perth, Western Australia. [3] One of these children died in 1998. [4]
While living in New Zealand, Willis produced a half-hour television documentary, Stanley, filmed in October–November 1974 for the NZBC. The film concerned the 12-day manhunt (in October 1941) for Stanley Graham, after a mass shooting at Kowhitirangi. Based on his interviews with witnesses, including participants in the manhunt, and his access to the previously closed police files, Willis wrote Manhunt, the most detailed and definitive account of the event. [5] [6] [7] A feature film based on his book, [8] Bad Blood (1981), was directed by Mike Newell and featured actors Jack Thompson and Carol Burns (as Stan and Dorothy Graham). In 2012, Willis returned to Kowhitirangi and Hokitika, where Graham is buried. His account of his trip to Westland and the Graham story was published in the "Travel" section of The West Australian . [9] Willis's 2012 visit to New Zealand also generated articles paying homage to the earthquake damaged city of Christchurch and the philosopher Karl Popper (a resident of Christchurch in 1937–45). [10]
After settling in Western Australia, Willis worked as an archival researcher, film script assessor (WA Film Council, 1991–93), book editor and reviewer. Between 1989 and 2006, he wrote about 250 reviews for The West Australian, The Age and The Canberra Times . [11] He also wrote a number of longer articles on subjects that included the closure of the old Metters Limited stove factory in Perth, [12] chronic pain, [13] east European cultural and political history, [14] cultural stereotyping, [15] and environmental issues. [16] [17] In an essay on Colonial frontier violence [18] he identified and reproduced the first known photograph (1865) taken in the Kimberley region. His essay on pain was selected as the Western Australian finalist for the MBF Health and Well Being awards for 1994. [19] In 1994 he interviewed Tim Winton for Eureka Street ; [20] Winton later dedicated his novel Breath (2008) to Willis.
Willis has been involved in two aspects of the Australian "history wars". When Keith Windschuttle published The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume One (2002), Willis undertook a detailed analysis of the author's cited sources to dispute his figure for Aboriginal Tasmanians killed during hostilities in Van Diemen's Land. In relation to that debate, Robert Manne described Willis as "a conservative scholar ... known for his scrupulousness". [21] In 2010, he joined the debate over the introduction and history of smallpox in Australia, arguing that the origin of the 1789 outbreak near Sydney was most likely from a Macassan introduction through Northern Australia. [22]
As a non-fiction editor, Willis prepared for publication (including the title) The Last of the Last (2009), the autobiography of Claude Choules, the last combat veteran of World War I. At the time of publication Choules was 108, making him the world’s oldest first time author. [23] Other titles edited by Willis include From Kastellorizo (2006), Michael (Stratos) Jack Kailis’s memoir of his extended family, [24] and Nurses with Altitude (2008), a collection of stories by Western Australian nurses of the Royal Flying Doctor Service. [25]
Between 1982 and 1991, Willis published 11 short stories in various literary journals, including Overland , [26] Australian Short Stories, [27] Brave New Word, [28] [29] Going Down Swinging, [30] The Weekend Australian , [31] [32] and Island Magazine . [33] [34]
In 2010, Willis indexed and was one of the editorial annotators of The Australind Journals of Marshall Waller Clifton 1840–1861. [35] In 2011, he wrote an introductory essay to a reprinted edition of Thermo-Electrical Cooking Made Easy, [36] [37] by Nora Curle-Smith, [38] first published in Kalgoorlie in 1907, [39] and claimed to be the world’s first cookbook for an electric stove.
In 2006, Willis was diagnosed with hepatitis C, which he believes was contracted by either a blood transfusion or a catheter in a Perth hospital in the mid-1980s. After two unsuccessful attempts to treat the disease, he was cleared of the virus in 2019. He wrote about having what was, at the time, an incurable disease in his debut novel, What Comrade Oldie Knew (2021). [40]
A second novel, Playing with Mischief, set in rural Victoria (Ballarat and Kyneton) in the early 1960s, was self-published at the end of July 2021. [41]
The Eureka Rebellion was a series of events involving gold miners who revolted against the British administration of the colony of Victoria, Australia during the Victorian gold rush. It culminated in the Battle of the Eureka Stockade, which took place on 3 December 1854 at Ballarat between the rebels and the colonial forces of Australia. The fighting left at least 27 dead and many injured, most of the casualties being rebels. There was a preceding period beginning in 1851 of peaceful demonstrations and civil disobedience on the Victorian goldfields. The miners, many of whom such as Raffaello Carboni came from Europe and were veterans of the Revolutions of 1848, had various grievances, chiefly the cost of mining permits and the officious way the system was enforced.
The Story of the Kelly Gang is a 1906 Australian Bushranger film directed by Charles Tait. It traces the exploits of 19th-century bushranger and outlaw Ned Kelly and his gang, with the film being shot in and around Melbourne. The original cut of this silent film ran for more than an hour with a reel length of about 1,200 metres (4,000 ft), making it the longest narrative film yet seen in the world. It premiered at Melbourne's Athenaeum Hall on 26 December 1906 and was first shown in the United Kingdom in January 1908. A commercial and critical success, it is regarded as the origin point of the bushranging drama, a genre that dominated the early years of Australian film production. Since its release, many other films have been made about the Kelly legend.
A kitchen stove, often called simply a stove or a cooker, is a kitchen appliance designed for the purpose of cooking food. Kitchen stoves rely on the application of direct heat for the cooking process and may also contain an oven, used for baking. "Cookstoves" are heated by burning wood or charcoal; "gas stoves" are heated by gas; and "electric stoves" by electricity. A stove with a built-in cooktop is also called a range.
Timothy John Winton is an Australian writer. He has written novels, children's books, non-fiction books, and short stories. In 1997, he was named a Living Treasure by the National Trust of Australia, and has won the Miles Franklin Award four times.
Eric Stanley George Graham was a New Zealander who killed seven people.
A billycan is an Australian term for a lightweight cooking pot in the form of a metal bucket commonly used for boiling water, making tea/coffee or cooking over a campfire or to carry water. These utensils are more commonly known simply as a billy or occasionally as a billy can.
An electric stove, electric cooker or electric range is a stove with an integrated electrical heating device to cook and bake. Electric stoves became popular as replacements for solid-fuel stoves which required more labor to operate and maintain. Some modern stoves come in a unit with built-in extractor hoods.
There were two Australian periodicals called The Port Phillip Gazette.
Bad Blood is a 1981 British-New Zealand thriller film set during World War II in the small town of Koiterangi on the west coast of the South Island of New Zealand, and is based on the factual manhunt for mass-murderer Stanley Graham. The film was directed by English director Mike Newell, who went on to direct Four Weddings and a Funeral. Much of the film was shot at the original locations. The script was based upon Manhunt: The Story of Stanley Graham, by H. A. Willis and adapted by New Zealand-born Andrew Brown.
Eureka Stockade is a 1949 British film of the story surrounding Irish-Australian rebel and politician Peter Lalor and the gold miners' rebellion of 1854 at the Eureka Stockade in Ballarat, Victoria, in the Australian Western genre.
Arthur Bruce Smith, commonly referred to as A. Bruce Smith, was a long serving Australian politician and leading political opponent of the White Australia policy. He has been described as the most prominent Australian advocate for classical liberalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
Peter Benjamin Graham was an Australian visual artist, printer, and art theorist.
Roger Scholes was an Australian independent film and television maker from 1983 on. He worked as a producer, director, writer, script editor, cinematographer, and editor in drama and documentary projects for cinema and television.
The Mystery of the Hansom Cab is an Australian feature-length film directed by W. J. Lincoln based on the popular novel, which had also been adapted into a play. It was one of several films Lincoln made with the Tait family, who had produced The Story of the Kelly Gang.
Eureka Stockade is a 1907 Australian silent film about the Eureka Rebellion. It was the second feature film made in Australia, following The Story of the Kelly Gang.
The Loyal Rebel is a 1915 Australian silent film directed by Alfred Rolfe set against the background of the Eureka Rebellion.
Members of the Murdoch family are prominent international media magnates and media tycoons with roots in Australia and the United Kingdom, along with their media assets in the United States. Some members have also been prominent in the arts, clergy, and military.
William Bramwell Withers was a journalist and novelist best known for writing the first history of Ballarat, Victoria. Born in England, Withers moved to the Colony of Natal in 1849 and contributed to local newspapers. He moved to Victoria in 1852, working odd jobs before becoming a reporter for the Argus and the Herald in Melbourne.
Frederick Metters was an ironworker, founder of the South Australian company which became Metters Limited, of South Australia, Western Australia and New South Wales, known for domestic and industrial cooking ovens and other cooking equipment, and for windpumps. Two of his brothers earlier founded a similarly named company in Victoria known for domestic and industrial cooking ovens.
Doris Brett is an Australian writer and clinical psychologist. She has written in a number of genres, including poetry, memoir and nonfiction.
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