Culture Shocks

How do you set about trying to understand a culture’s effects on the country’s levels of invention? Writer and entrepreneur, Jonathan Englert, wanted to do just that.  

“So how do I, as an author, tackle the subject of this book – inventiveness – that is also a continent, a people, a culture, a climate, a geography, and, let’s face it, ultimately unknowable? The answer is: I don’t. It will never be tackled. Each insight, each nugget of information, will splinter into thousands of separate enlightenments.” 

This is one of the statements in his PhD that seeks to define the nature of invention through a portrait of Australia and shake the foundations of journalism simultaneously.

But in a podcast series that is about highlighting moments of Australian innovation, it is worth spending some time analysing what innovation is, and what might be the factors driving it. 

Ok, so this episode may leave us with more questions than answers. Why are these people not household names? Who is Henry Hoke? Why the hell are we talking about wombat poo and bricks in the toilet? Never fear! We will address some of these here, and perhaps have a follow up episode – there’s just so much to explore!

I’ve spent many hours in the past musing with Jonathan on the nature of innovation. My own background is embedded with it – I was profiled in Canberra's CityNews, talking about the famous Australian inventor, Henry Hoke, as part of an exhibition of his work compiled by the Institute of Backyard Studies. I can’t believe these articles still exist…

This author with one of Henry Hoke's inventions. Credit: Brent McDonald, CityNews 

So many patents! Here's the patent for the Hills Hoist. Credit: The Canberra Times 

"Blokes with hats": Tom Roberts, Charcoal burners (previously known as Wood splitters), 1886, Art Gallery of Ballerat (detail). 

I even developed workshops for students and teachers at Questacon – The National Science and Technology Centre, on fostering creativity and innovative thinking. There was a show on invention for Floriade. This work I continued and expanded upon in my role at the Discovery Science and Technology Centre in Bendigo, where we collaborated with The Men’s Shed to build engaging exhibits for visitors. 

In the glossy image, I’m leaning on the Random Excuse Generator. Powered by bulldust (a colloquial term for bullshit), it is a huge hunking machine embodying whimsy, a tinkering aesthetic and backyard humour by spitting out random excuses with the help of levers and cogs. 

Henry Hoke was one of the inventors profiled in Jonathan’s PhD – a phenomenon born of the cultural identity of “blokes in hats” (to quote Hannah Gadsby), out in the bush, tinkering in a shed. A strong image in the imagination of the most urbanised country in the world (yep, that’s us!).

But a cultural myth is born from a country’s collective psychology or priorities, whether for right or wrong. There’s something to explore in the idea, alongside the history of innovation in Australia – not to mention supplying information to the question of who we remember and why (“are there any women here?” plays Monty Python’s famous line again and again in my head).

This is not Australia’s only cultural identity by any means, but it is one that has prevailed since pre-Federation. So what is it about this particular version of Australia’s multiple personalities that encourages innovation? 

Because, though many countries claim to be innovative, Australia can back it up. Jonathan says that when he started looking, he found the Australian innovation tally was very strong by comparison. For example, we have more patents per person than any other country. Many of them have world-wide applications, such as the black box recorder. 

What cultural factors could be driving this?

On reading Jonathan’s thesis, I can summarise the cultural elements that foster innovation to:

• The physicality of the country – isolated from others, huge expanses of land 
• The evolved psychology – anti-authoritarianism, anti-establishment (both which encourages a rejection of prevailing wisdom), a natural curiosity and a sense of play.

The inventors he profiled in his work are:

• Lawrence Hargrave, who is credited as supplying key innovations to enable airplanes in the 1890s.
• Barry Marshall, who worked out that bacteria cause stomach ulcers in the 1980s
• David Skellern, a key figure in the story of inventing fast Wifi in the 1990s.
• Stuart and Cedar Anderson, who invented a beehive that extracts honey without opening the hive, called Flow Hive, which broke crowdfunding records in 2015.
• Henry Hoke, who built a collection of innovations like the rope hammer and the leg pull from the first half of the 20th century. 
• Mark Thomson, keeper of Henry Hoke’s archives and founder of the Institute for Backyard Studies.

Though none of these men knew each other, all had a “give-it-a-go” attitude, gave space for tinkering and exploration, and looked for gaps in common knowledge. Is this that cultural spirit? 

Other than David, whose innovation came from teamwork at CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, the rest were tinkering in the bush (Barry Marshall started his life in Kalgoorlie tinkering alongside a mechanic father and nurse mother, before becoming a doctor in the – still isolated – Perth). All embodying the outback “blokes in hats” identity (Hannah's show on Australian Art really is a must see) or, more accurately, blokes in really big sheds (Cedar’s can fit 12 cars!). 

Mandy and Jonathan exchange PhD horror stories in the studio.

Dr Barry Marshall and colleague Dr Robin Warren receive their Nobel Prize for Physiology in 2005. Credit: University of Western Australia  

Poppies! Credit: Katarzyna Pe

Jonathan writes: 

“If I’d had any epiphanies about Australian inventiveness, they emerged quietly, not out of a story but out of the features of the land, its distance, its silence; the strange, sometimes discomforting, sometimes elating sense of vastness staring back at me. 

Against that backdrop, I found a long-drop toilet made of three stacked truck tires and a wooden ring for a seat. I thought of the dual-flush toilet, an Australian water-saving invention that led to thoughts of how the scarcity of water and resources drove everything from thoughtful improvements that supported conservation to crude, makeshift imitations of civilisation. 

But most of all, the desert creates space, distance from others’ opinions, distance from consequences, an opportunity for a shift of perception. There were a lot of miles to cover, miles empty of cars and visible life, and into this emptiness streamed ideas.”

Following on from this supportive landscape and psychology for invention, however, there follows the question, “why are these people not household names?”

Barry Marshall’s innovation has saved tens of millions of lives all over the world – but do Australian students name him before a scientist like Albert Einstein? Even I wouldn’t know if I bumped into Barry on the street (he did, however, win a Nobel Prize, so there is some serious recognition for his work).

Jonathan’s thesis is that the tall poppy syndrome is at work here, to disastrous effect:

“There’s a severity in it, a chilling dimension.”

He refers to it in relation to Lawrence Hargrave who, at the end of the day, is a rather tragic figure: so important to the innovation of flight, and as an instigator of broad collaboration, but ultimately dismissed by his family and community:

“Hargrave was a victim of being great in a small country. And, to his extra misfortune, great in a small country that eats the egos of its own.”

I must admit, that working around Americans has given me a sense of, “it’s ok to say you’re good at this, and to own your achievements.” But it still feels like a weird thing to do. It comes across as arrogant so much of the time to an Australian. We really hold the “no tall poppy” ideal close. Most of the time, I think it is nice to have a sense of egality no matter what someone has achieved (we famously don’t use people’s titles to address them, don’t use ‘Sir’ or ‘M’am’, and call a CEO by their first name – most likely ‘John’...). But this comes unstuck when it is about celebrating the people who have bettered our lives. 

So here’s to unmasking those heroes and highlighting them here. Particularly the women and Indigenous people who have worked so hard, and acted so innovatively, to improve the world. 

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