Etherington,+Norman

14 Campbell St. Subiaco, Western Australia 6008 61-89-380-2138 nether@cyllene.uwa.edu.au
 * Norman Etherington**

**1969: **1959-63—Undergraduate at Yale University.  Graduated //summa cum laude//; June, 1963—married Wendy Anne Sarkissian of Vancouver, BC; 1963-64—Carnegie Teaching Fellow in history at Yale; 1964-65—Yale Law School (which I hated); 1965-67 graduate study in history at Yale.  During these years I was also Assistant Director of Debating and Public Speaking.  Received MA degree in 1966.  For a year and a half Wendy and I were in London, Berlin, Rome, Norway and South Africa where I was collecting material for a doctoral dissertation in history.  Received M. Phil. Degree in 1968.  Since Oct. 1968 I have been in Adelaide [Australia] teaching history at the university.  My wife is the Senior Research Officer for the South Australian Housing Trust. <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; msospacerun: yes; mso-spacerun: yes;"> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After a lapse of 10 years I have started playing the bassoon again. <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; msospacerun: yes; mso-spacerun: yes;"> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am as bad as ever, but since bassoon players are rare around here, I have managed to get in some playing with one of Adelaide’s amateur orchestras.

<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">**1979:** <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; msospacerun: yes; mso-spacerun: yes;"> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is just a bare chance I may get to the reunion. <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; msospacerun: yes; mso-spacerun: yes;"> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I plan to be back in Mount Vernon for a couple of weeks at the end of August; if our chance to spend some time in a farmhouse near Rome falls through, we may come back to the States a few weeks early. <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; msospacerun: yes; mso-spacerun: yes;"> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One way or another I will be around town in late August and would look forward to seeing any old classmates (please send messages to my mother at the above address). <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; msospacerun: yes; mso-spacerun: yes;"> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There have been fewer changes in my life during the last 10 years than in the previous decade. <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; msospacerun: yes; mso-spacerun: yes;"> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’m still a professor of history at the University of Adelaide in South Australia. <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; msospacerun: yes; mso-spacerun: yes;"> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This year I have a 12 month sabbatical which I’m spending in Europe and America trying to write 2 books. <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; msospacerun: yes; mso-spacerun: yes;"> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So far I can’t say that this cunning plan to combine business with pleasure is working too well. <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; msospacerun: yes; mso-spacerun: yes;"> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That is, the pleasure part of the year is going much better than the business part. <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; msospacerun: yes; mso-spacerun: yes;"> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I suppose the biggest change over the last few years is that I got divorced from one wife and recently acquired another one. <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; msospacerun: yes; mso-spacerun: yes;"> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the moment we are staying in a little 16th century mill converted into a house and located a little way north of the Dordogne River in the middle of France. <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; msospacerun: yes; mso-spacerun: yes;"> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Spring is sprung and life seems very sweet. <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; msospacerun: yes; mso-spacerun: yes;"> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Next week we move to Greece. <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; msospacerun: yes; mso-spacerun: yes;"> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hello to one and all!!!

<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">**1999: **After 20 years in the history department at the University of Adelaide, I was offered the chair in history at the University of Western Australia—so for the last 10 years I’ve been in Perth, a lovely city of about 1.5 million people perched on the edge of the Indian Ocean. <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; msospacerun: yes; mso-spacerun: yes;"> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The closest major cities to us are Adelaide and Singapore! <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; msospacerun: yes; mso-spacerun: yes;"> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My research work on British and South African history takes me to Africa a lot, also to London and the US. <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-tab-count: 1; msotabcount: 1;"> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My wife Peggy specializes in the history of Australia’s Aboriginal people. <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; msospacerun: yes; mso-spacerun: yes;"> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We have two sons. <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; msospacerun: yes; mso-spacerun: yes;"> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nat the oldest is about to begin studies in Architecture at the University of Sydney. <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; msospacerun: yes; mso-spacerun: yes;"> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His brother Ben is in his last year of High School, and is not sure where he’d like to go to college. <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; msospacerun: yes; mso-spacerun: yes;"> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He is sure that it must be some place where he can continue playing the bassoon. <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; msospacerun: yes; mso-spacerun: yes;"> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(Yes, he carries on the tradition, and passed me long ago). <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; msospacerun: yes; mso-spacerun: yes;"> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In my spare time I work on the 100-year old house we live in, and play with the Fremantle Symphony Orchestra. <span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; msobidifontsize: 10.0pt; msofareastfontfamily: 'Times New Roman'; msoansilanguage: EN-US; msofareastlanguage: EN-US; msobidilanguage: AR-SA;">[The following information is from //The Electronic Journal of Australian and New Zealand History// (http://www.sociology.org/EJANZH/editor.htm), for which Norm serves on the advisory board. <span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; msospacerun: yes; mso-spacerun: yes; msobidifontsize: 10.0pt; msofareastfontfamily: 'Times New Roman'; msoansilanguage: EN-US; msofareastlanguage: EN-US; msobidilanguage: AR-SA;"> <span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; msobidifontsize: 10.0pt; msofareastfontfamily: 'Times New Roman'; msoansilanguage: EN-US; msofareastlanguage: EN-US; msobidilanguage: AR-SA;">This was my means of contacting him, so I decided to include it here.—J.G.] <span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; msospacerun: yes; mso-spacerun: yes; msobidifontsize: 10.0pt; msofareastfontfamily: 'Times New Roman'; msoansilanguage: EN-US; msofareastlanguage: EN-US; msobidilanguage: AR-SA;"> <span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; msobidifontsize: 10.0pt; msofareastfontfamily: 'Times New Roman'; msoansilanguage: EN-US; msofareastlanguage: EN-US; msobidilanguage: AR-SA;">“Professor Etherington holds a chair in History at the University of Western Australia, and is an ex-president of the Australian Historical Association. He is known internationally for his books and articles on various aspects of the history of colonialism in Africa and the Pacific. Since his appointment to UWA in 1989 he has been responsible for innovations in undergraduate and postgraduate teaching, notably with respect to the application of new information technologies. He is a founding editor of H-ANZAU. As President of the Australian Historical Association he has committed the Association to exploring how best information technologies might service the future teaching and research needs of the Australian historical profession.”]


 * 2009: ** My life has not changed drastically since we last met up. I formally retired from the University of Western Australia at the end of 2007, but I continue to do historical research and writing. Just at the moment I'm doing a few weeks of research at the British National Archives, while staying in a London apartment with my wife Peggy. At the same time we've been able to spend some time with our kids. Son Ben has a junior appointment in the English Department at Cambridge University, while our older son, Nathan, has been working as an architect in London up to last month. In September he goes back to being a student again, working towards the Master of Architecture degree in the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. As both kids are still under 30, there have been no marriages or grandchildren, though who knows what the future holds. Peggy has decided to take early retirement (at age 62) from her job as professor of history at Edith Cowan University. We plan to sell our house in Perth and buy something in Adelaide (her home town, and the place where I spent 20 happy years in my first full-time job). Our retirement plans include a lot of travelling, hopefully some of it to the Pacific Northwest. We have an apartment in Sydney, which we like very much as a second home. Also, since our last reunion I've become a boat owner (a 33 foot cabin cruiser), which I've so far used exploring Perth's Swan River. Next year we plan to ship it to Adelaide and make an ascent of the Murrary, Australia's biggest and longest river. After that, if all goes well, the boat will live in Sydney Harbor. I'm very much looking forward to the MVHS reunion, though I will probably arrive somewhat jet-lagged, since I can't fly out until after a meeting in Perth on the 28th August, and will get into Vancouver at 7.30am the morning of the 29th!