Page 2042 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 28 May 1991
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the first things he insisted on was that I be brought out to that marvellous house in Forrest, that Robin Boyd house, so that we could talk and get to know each other. That was one of the essences of Manning; he wanted to get to know people, not to project himself. He wanted to know other people. I thought that comment yesterday about him in the ward in St Vincent's Hospital was so true. When he was asked how he was he said, "Well, there's great drama here". He was not talking about himself; he was talking about all the other people in the ward where he was one patient.
I remember him as a man who dealt with his colleagues as friends and equals. As Don Baker said of him, he did not like to give orders. He talked to all of us as equals and gave us free rein to pursue the interests and passions which mattered to us. This was no small matter in a history department in the 1960s and the 1970s - a time of very considerable political turmoil. In that department there were all kinds of people. He assembled a department which represented a wide range of views, from a practising and active member of the Communist Party to practising and active Catholics.
Manning held an umbrella over the people he appointed. We loved him for himself. We loved our colleagues for the fact that we were, with Manning, in a common enterprise. He was, if you like - he might not like this - a bishop of the flock. He would not want to be a bishop though, would he, despite his father's Anglicanism and his brother's Anglicanism; but I do think of him as a good shepherd. He was a good shepherd not only when he was head of department but also after he retired, many years ago. He continued his interest in and, indeed, his influence upon - did he but know it - all the members of his department and their wives or husbands and their children. The telegrams would come, and the loving cards, where the handwriting was almost indecipherable; but you knew what he meant.
It was a great honour to be part of a department of which he was head. If you think about who he brought with him you will recognise the power of this group. I have written down the names of some of them: Eric Fry; Professor Ken Inglis, now at Cambridge; Professor John Molony, now in Dublin; Professor Bob Gollan, the first Manning Clark professor of history at the ANU; Professor Bill Mandle, still writing in our local journals; the late Barbara Penny; the late Geoffrey Fairbairn, an extraordinary man - I think only someone like Manning would have appointed him, and we all very much cared for Geoffrey, as did Manning; the late Professor Mick Williams; John Ritchie, editor of the Australian Dictionary of Biography; Dorothy Shineberg; a marvellous nun, Sister Pauline Kneipp - she and Manning were great friends; Humphrey McQueen; and, of course, Don Baker. I also recall Professor Wang Gungwu, now vice-chancellor in Hong Kong, but part of our department for a while. Let me add Bruce Kent, Bill Craven and Ian Hancock, who became heads of the history department after Manning Clark and Mick Williams.
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