Information about former Tasmanian Premier Harry Holgate is scarce. He was born in Maitland, New South Wales in 1933 and died of cancer at Launceston aged 63 in 1997. The official records about him, and the Wikipedia entry, omit some details. He was married at one time to the author Kathryn West, who wrote for The Bulletin in the 1960s under the name Kathryn Holgate. Ms West wrote a book called Power in the Liberal Party after the end of her marriage to Harry. A sister, Marjorie Holgate, also known as Marjorie McDonald, was murdered in Burnie in 1951 by her de facto husband, former Labor MHA John Joseph McDonald, who served five years imprisonment for manslaughter. McDonald died in 1956, rumoured to be from his own hand.
My interest in Mr Holgate’s past derives from the publication of an article in a magazine in 2007 about my brother’s murder. He was the Melbourne solicitor Keith William Allan. Three men are serving long sentences for his murder, in May of 2000, although his body has never been found. A lady in Devonport contacted me, as people often do when articles are published in magazines. She wanted to tell me about a murder that took place in her home town of Burnie when she was in her early teens. It was, she said, the first murder in Burnie and the victim, whom everyone knew as Mrs McDonald, was the sister of Harry Holgate. She was unaware that Mrs McDonald’s partner was a former Labor MHA and the son and brother of Labor MHAs James McDonald and Thomas Raymond McDonald. The former once served as Attorney General and the latter, after being defeated at an election, was a journalist on the Mercury.
Little was written about the McDonald murder. It was of course a story in the Melbourne Truth newspaper, but Tasmanians are not people to like scandal. It was my search for the McDonald murder that led to my first reading the Tasmanian Times, via a google search. This led to a contact with a lady who lived in Launceston. She did a thesis on Tasmanian murders, but was unaware about this one. Nor was Ellen Whinett, a former Mercury journalist who also wrote about murders. I suspect this was not an Orr type scandal, which is generally known about, but this lack of knowledge was due to the fact that some time had elapsed and no one had ever made a Harry Holgate connection.
It is said in Hobart that a book about the sacking of Sydney Sparkes Orr, the inaugural Professor of Philosophy at UTAS, the details of which I won’t go into here, is purchased immediately if it ever appears in one of Hobart’s antiquarian or second-hand bookshops, no doubt to keep it out of circulation. All this happened in the 1950s, and some people in Hobart still talk about it. I bought a copy of the book in a second-hand bookshop in Carlton, Melbourne. A friend of mine in Hobart wanted to read it, and luckily I was able to find it. A book has recently been published about Harry Holgate. If it ever appears in Hobart bookshops, or even any Tasmanian second-hand bookshop, it is not likely to suffer a similar fate.
I doubt that anyone is going to go to any trouble to obtain a copy of the Holgate book. Not if they read the Tasmanian Times. The book is available on line and printed on demand. The price range is between $49.56 and $138.95. Borders and Angus and Robertson are the most expensive. When I received my copy in the mail this morning I thought I had been conned. It is purportedly edited by Frederic P Miller, Agnes F Vandome and John McBrewster, who are editors of other on demand printed books with a similar genre. The blurb on the cover says the book consists of “high quality” Wikipedia articles. Enough said. The content is exclusively that of the online encyclopedia. I had no need to buy it. All is available on line for free.
Why would anyone want to pay an outrageous price for such a book if they know exactly what it is? The answer lies in the policies of our universities. Students in some faculties at UTAS are told not to use Wikipedia as a source unless they can verify the content. They are also told never to cite from Wikipedia. Citing from encyclopedia articles is generally not good academic practice, unless the author is named and the article makes some contribution to the subject of an essay. Wikipedia produces additional problems, and the UTAS advice is generally good advice, for Wikipedia is an encyclopedia anyone can edit.
While much information in Wikipedia is valuable and of good quality, much information also is of doubtful accuracy. Much is sanitised. Most parliamentarians regularly look at their Wikipedia entries, and anything negative about themselves is soon removed. Often articles are written to advocate a certain position. The article on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, for example, has been criticised for uncritically promoting the view that the condition is likely to be psychosomatic. See:
http://users.chariot.net.au/~posture/Da%20Costa%27sSynd%20Wikiwebpa2.html
Wikipedia entries must always be checked. Some journalists and often some authors accept much in Wikipedia that may not be accurate. This is unfortunate.
Miller, Vandome and McBrewster may or may not be real people, but that is probably not important when it comes to citing references. The quality of the source and the argument presented are of greater importance. The publishers, Alphascript Publishing, is located in Mauritius. The book has an ISBN number. A student in one of Tasmania’s colleges or at UTAS writing a history of Harry Holgate would be marked down or asked to re-write their work if they cited Wikipedia. If they cite from Miller, Vandome and McBrewster they will probably get away with it. Unless their teacher or lecturer has been reading the Tasmanian Times.
Reference: Frederic P Miller, Agnes F Vandome, John McBrewster (ed.) (2010), Harry Holgate, Beau Bassin, Mauritius. ISBN 978-613-2-58450-2
