John Arnold review of Graeme Johanson, Searching for Elsewhere

(Port Adelaide: Ginninderra Press, 2023), 310 pp., PB $45, ISBN 9781761095597

Graeme Johanson’s and my own life share some parallels. We both started our professional careers as reference librarians at the La Trobe Library, the then Australiana wing of the State Library of Victoria. Later we both moved to academia, Graeme becoming a lecturer in librarianship at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, myself a senior research fellow at the newly established National Centre for Australian Studies at Monash University. Graeme then followed me to Monash, joining the department of librarianship located in the faculty of information technology. While at Monash, Graeme published widely in his field before retiring as an associate professor. Like many retired academics, he has continued to research and publish.

We also both grew up in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, Graeme in Canterbury, myself in the newer postwar part of nearby Burwood. So I have known him both as a colleague and friend for close on 50 years. For these reasons, I was most interested to read his memoir of growing up in a strict Plymouth Brethren community in Melbourne.

Johanson’s book can be read by several different audiences. The first is his immediate extended family and I expect it was for them that the book was mainly written: to tell them the story of his growing up in a strict religious household, something that would seem alien to most, if not all, of his children and grandchildren. The other, wider audience are those interested in the history of the Plymouth Brethren in Australia and the effect of what can only be described as its stifling and harmful influence. A more general, third audience would be those interested in middle-class suburban life in Melbourne in the 1950s and 1960s—the growth years of the baby boomers.

Johanson begins by giving a detailed overview of the Brethren’s history. When he was growing up, the movement had around 20,000 followers in Australia. He provides an evocative picture of his first and formative years living in Canterbury, going to the local state primary school and then onto Camberwell High School where he was dux in his final year.

The cover of the book has a class photo of Grade 4B of Canterbury State School taken in 1956. Every baby boomer would have similar ones in their family archive: a small chalkboard at the front, the boys in coats and shorts and wearing a tie, knotted properly for the photo, and the girls in blazers, skirts and ties. One of the boys—and, with this particular class, it is boys only—is holding a football. It is 10-year-old Graeme Johanson. At first this can be viewed simply as a nostalgic image but, once you are into the text, you realise that its choice was surely a symbolic and poignant one. Although allowed, like most schoolboys of the time, to have a football, Johanson and his two brothers were not allowed to play for the school or the local footy team. They could only play kick-to-kick with each other or with their limited circle of friends.

Participation in team sports or organised groups like cubs and scouts was not permitted by the Plymouth Brethren and the Johanson parents were strict adherents. They were also not allowed to bring non-Brethren school friends home to play or muck around, and the family’s holidays were always stays with like-minded families. The four children also had to attend numerous Brethren meetings and were not allowed to attend religious instruction classes at school. This was actually a blessing for Graeme, as it meant he could go to the library and read. In his final year at Camberwell High, Johanson, in addition to being dux of the school, was nominated and elected as a prefect. However, his parents and the Brethren would not let him accept the position, as it would be mixing with the world.

Somewhat surprisingly—and to the considerable benefit of her four children (three boys, one girl)—Johanson’s mother, a great reader herself, encouraged them to read with little apparent restriction on content and to discuss the books they were reading over the dinner table. Coupled with this life-saving practice was the ongoing generosity of her sister, Johanson’s aunt. Although she and Johanson’s father detested each other, she lived permanently with the family. She worked as the office manager of a medical practice and her munificence knew no bounds. She bought the Johanson children books, took them on overseas trips, bought a holiday house at Ocean Grove for the family and, later, a bigger family home in Balwyn. No-one seemed to question where all her money came from, but her edifice collapsed when it was revealed that she was not only touching the till of the medical practice she worked at, but also opening it wide and helping herself to its contents. Once found out, she was sentenced to three years in gaol, commuted to one year because of her age and for good behaviour. It is possible that she was in league with one of the partners in the medical practice, enabling her to embezzle large amounts over a long period, but he died before any charges could be laid against him.

How did the Johanson children cope with the strict Brethren life? Graeme’s older brothers appear to have paid only lip-service to their parent’s beliefs and lifestyle and went on with their lives, one becoming a historian, the other a general practitioner. Johanson’s sister, the youngest of the four children, is a fairly silent character in the book, possibly because she adhered to Brethren principles more than her male siblings.

When the eldest son was awarded a scholarship to the University of Oxford, the family was thrown into turmoil. The Plymouth Brethren hierarchy forbade him to go as he would be corrupted by non-believers. David Johanson insisted on taking up the scholarship. As a result, the family was expelled from the Brethren following a kangaroo court hearing. Along with others who had left or been expelled, the Johanson family (the parents really) set up another Brethren sect, less strict than the Plymouth one.

David Johanson, after completing his studies at Oxford, became an academic historian. He wrote the historical introduction to the 1962 revised edition of the influential pamphlet Control of Colour Bar: A Proposal for Change in Australia’s Immigration Policy, issued by the Melbourne-based Immigration Reform Group. Fellow historian and later crime novelist Peter Corris described him as a ‘magnetic teacher’. Unfortunately, alcohol and drugs overtook his life and he died at the relatively young age of 47. The other brother, Peter, after graduating in medicine and working as a doctor in Melbourne, escaped to Europe, undertook further studies to become a surgeon, and later worked for a drug company in Paris. Tragically, in 1995, he was a killed in a car accident.

Graeme remained in Melbourne, married and had two children and began the career described at the beginning of this review. Writing Searching for Elsewhere must have been a cathartic experience for him. He describes in detail how he eventually escaped from the Brethren stronghold. This was only achieved with considerable personal struggle. In the book, Johanson tries to both describe and analyse the effects his upbringing had on him. A good selection of period photographs help give the book context. At times, there is some repetition in the telling and a chronology or timeline would have helped the reader follow the story better. But his is a moving story and readers from the three audiences outlined earlier will find his book of interest.