'The Library that Made Me', State Library of New South Wales

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Good afternoon, everyone.

Thank you, Philippa, for your forethought in inviting me this afternoon.

It coincides with my delighted acceptance of the invitation to become Patron of National and State Libraries Australasia.

Patronage will allow me to recognise and amplify NSLA’s extraordinary and collaborative work to address the challenges and changes in the library sector today, and to continue to build rich and sustainable collections for the future.

I am looking forward to more fully appreciating and celebrating the people and programs of our national and state libraries.

And, as I will explain in a moment, this will also play a role in an innovation I am keen to pursue at both Government and Admiralty Houses.

If you take today’s theme literally, or simply prosaically – the library that made me – there really is only one story I would share.

The story of my parents’ grand love affair, brought to life in a magical moment in the early 1960s, happened across the borrowing counter at the library at the Weapons Research Establishment in Salisbury, Adelaide. 

My mother was a young vibrant, I’ll say gorgeous librarian at the WRE and my father was a dashing, and dare I say it, handsome, young army Captain borrowing a technical book. 

The story goes – as checked with my 90-year-old father earlier this week – their eyes locked and they both felt a spark. 

When he returned the book the very next day in an act of wishing to see her again – he asked her to an army ball that weekend. 

She accepted, love bloomed, and they were not parted again until my mother died three years ago. 

Without that defence library – now a part of the Defence Science and Technology Organisation, one that I celebrated as a technology organisation just last week – I would never have been made – and until preparing for today I had forgotten that piece of family history. 

>> >> >> >>

History is so often the product of errors and omissions.

Of half-heard conversations, or partially deciphered documents.

Of things not seen or understood.

Or a simple trick of the light.

As the sun dips low in the sky just across the harbour at Kirribilli, the stained-glass windows illuminating the staircase at Admiralty House are a festive fruit salad of ruby reds, tawny yellows, emerald greens and deep blues.

Each window depicts the family crests of the Admirals of the Royal Navy’s Australian Squadron, who occupied the house from 1885 to the early 20th century.

Walking up the stairs, a recent guest exclaimed ‘Isn’t it wonderful that the Admirals were such devoted readers!’.

In the dappled light, she misread the thoroughly naval motto of ‘always ready’ for ‘always read’.

It was such a happy mistake.

And it leaves us with a motto I would happily take as my own – ‘Always Read’.

>> >> >> >>

The generation of digital natives who have tapped, clicked and swiped from infancy are a well-studied phenomenon.

I belong to a different era – brought up in a world of books into which the digital world gently intruded before engulfing us in its king tide of words and images.

As a generation, we are hybrids. 

We know books and their beauty.

Their quiet treasure and their loud assertions.

Is there anything quite like the exquisite moment of a book slipping from between your fingers as your eyes grow heavy with sleep?

Or the apprehension of standing before a new friend’s bookcase, wondering if their habits of reading will promote them to soulmate, or demote them to ‘someone I used to know’?

Online, we know, too, the sudden insight of an update to a breaking news story.

The speed and endless possibility of comparing and contrasting opinions and conclusions from multiple sources.

The ease of moving between a bird’s eye view and a granular insight.

But analogue or online, we read.

Post cards and Insta posts …

Christmas cards and podcast promos …

The texture of the printed page, and the white light of an e-journal.

Just like the Admirals may, or may not, have told us to, we always read.

>> >> >> >> >>

I had a peripatetic childhood.

You now know from where it derived its nature – the military.

We were a defence family, or a family of army brats, and we moved wherever my father’s career as an officer in the Australian Army took us.

So, by the time I enrolled at the Australian National University, I knew the love of reading, but I was yet to love a particular or special library. 

But books and reading were essential – whatever the circumstances.

[REFLECT ON: Tapes of bedtime stories on cassette tapes, from dad whilst he was in Vietnam]

Of all the freedoms I found at university, establishing my own relationship with a library – the ANU Law Library – was pure joy.

If you know the buildings of the ANU campus, you will know the Law Library as the stern, unadorned sibling to the flamboyant copper roof and stonework of the Menzies and the romantic colonnades of the Chifley.

If I was curious about Indonesia while I studied Bahasa Malay, I went to the Menzies. 

If I needed to escape with Thea Astley, I went to the Chifley.

If a torts exam was calling, I went to the Law Library.

It was a haunt and a refuge, a place to confirm what I knew and tremble at all I had yet to learn, a place to test my memory and stretch my imagination.

I reflect so fondly on that Sam, as she paused among the stacks to catch her breath at the brave new world before her.

And I am grateful to the wise women and men – the librarians – for their investment of care, energy and intellect in building the world-class collection that so deeply influenced my education.

Of course, I include in my thanks the magnificent Colin Steele – one of life’s great enthusiasts – who was University Librarian during my time at ANU and who has made an extraordinary contribution to the literary life of Canberra.

I was delighted by his appointment in January this year as a member of the Order of Australia for his significant service to librarianship and digital information sharing.

>> >> >> >>

The child Sam, who listened with love and longing to her father’s voice narrating the stories she adored, is the antecedent of the adult me, a voracious consumer of news and commentary.

And our homes have always reflected our insatiable purchasing of books.

The binding thread between then and now is a love of stories.

The stories of Australia – of who we are and who we hope to be. 

Of where we have come from and where we know we must go.

When I was sworn in as your Governor-General, I described Australia as the product of a mighty three-part story: 

… of 65,000 years of continuous Indigenous history and culture that echoes across the country in the generous and purposeful sharing of First Nations people … 

… of stability, equality and prosperity assured by the strength of our democracy and institutions of government … 

… and our modern chapter of optimism, of belonging and of progress, underpinned by remarkable multiculturalism. 

Over half a century of immigration and refugee arrivals – over 7.5 million migrants and almost one million refugees. 

In recent months, Simeon and I have worked with the National Gallery of Australia, the Australian War Memorial, the Parliamentary Art Collection and the National Portrait Gallery to hang works from the national collection in the public spaces of the Official Residences.

Our ambition is to tell the stories of Australia, so that every person who visits Government House in Canberra, or Admiralty House in Sydney, can see something of themselves reflected somewhere in the house.

This is an ongoing project that I hope will expand and evolve with my term in office.

And it has inspired a second undertaking – the one I hinted at as I opened these remarks – to have the written stories of Australia stacked, piled and layered in and on the abundant bookcases, occasional tables, what-nots and escritoires in the official residences.

Believe me, we have solved the perennial library problem of storage with a proliferation of book real estate.

It is a project for which I will need your help and advice.

To fulfil my commitment as a modern, visible and optimistic Governor-General, I want books written in the prose and poetry of centuries past.

And in the languages and genres of the modern, optimistic and diverse Australia of today.

The homes I have the privilege to take care of over the next five years should be bursting with the work of all Australians, across all genres.

I want to listen to and learn from the voices of all Australians, as they tell me what I need to hear, and what needs to be said.

I want to amplify the stories of Australia, told by remarkable storytellers with extraordinary stories to tell.

I want an unstinting focus on care, kindness and respect to be utterly wedded to challenging the assumptions that limit the breadth, depth and diversity of our stories.

I want all Australians – regardless of gender, identity, background, religion, ethnicity or ability – to see themselves, and the things that matter to them, as part of our national story.

My love of stories is deeply personal, but I know their power to speak to and for us all.

We find in stories our DNA and our destiny.

And the places that hold them, especially libraries, are sanctified by their beauty and potency.

To all of you here today, thank you for being part of our great Australian story, and for all the ways that you help to tell our bold, exuberant and inclusive story of welcome and belonging.

There is no doubt that I am the product of so many libraries and librarians – and perhaps one day, at an event such as this – a panellist may choose the libraries of Admiralty or Government House as the moment that made them!