Joseph Melvin

1852 - 1909    |    VIC    |    Reporter, War correspondent

Melvin was one of the boldest, most enterprising reporters of his time. At the siege of a hotel in Glenrowan in 1880, he helped move the wounded Ned Kelly indoors, then interviewed him, scooping other newspapers with his telegraphed report to The Argus. In 1885 he posed as a troopship steward to reach the Sudan war, where he received accreditation and remained with Australia’s infantry contingent throughout the campaign. He later investigated the recruiting of Pacific Islanders for the Queensland cane-fields, and in 1891 covered the great shearers’ strike.

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Biography

Joseph Melvin

By HARRY GORDON

Melvin was one of the boldest, most enterprising reporters of his time. At the siege of a hotel in Glenrowan in 1880, he helped move the wounded Ned Kelly indoors, then interviewed him, scooping other newspapers with his telegraphed report to The Argus. In 1885 he posed as a troopship steward to reach the Sudan war, where he received accreditation and remained with Australia’s infantry contingent throughout the campaign. He later investigated the recruiting of Pacific Islanders for the Queensland cane-fields, and in 1891 covered the great shearers’ strike. 

Joe Melvin’s hey-day lasted from the mid 1870s through the 1890s, but really he was a reporter for all the ages. Any editor, any time, would welcome the attributes he brought to a craft for which he seemed to have been born: an enterprising, restlessly inquisitive mind; infinite resourcefulness; a capacity for bold initiatives; a sharp edge of competitiveness; and an ability to write lucidly, accurately and fast. 

Joseph Dalgarno Melvin was born on August 15, 1852 in Banff, Scotland, excelled at school in both his lessons and in sport, and became a local hero at the age of 12, when he rescued a schoolmate from drowning in the Moray Firth. He was intent, even before he left the Banff Academy, on a career in journalism; to that end, he studied shorthand and landed a job on the Moray Advertiser, then later The Perth Advertiser

After his father immigrated to Melbourne in the mid-1970s to become a partner in a food-and-grain business, young Joe and the rest of the family followed. By the late 1870s he was on the staff of The Argus; he soon became one of that paper’s outstanding crew of reporters and contributors, working alongside Marcus Clarke, ‘The Vagabond’ (John Stanley James), Frank Myers, Howard Willoughby, Henry Britton, David Watterson, Donald Macdonald and Peter Symmonds. He became a member of the bohemian, literary-artistic Yorick Club, which had been founded by Clarke, and was later amalgamated into the Savage Club. 

On June 28, 1880, when the final confrontation between Ned Kelly’s outlaw gang and police took place, ending with the siege of the Glenrowan Hotel, Melvin was on the spot for The Argus. After the shoot-out in which Kelly was captured – heavily wounded in areas not covered by his body armour – Melvin recorded the first interview with him, scooping other newspapers with his quickly-wired reports. In that interview Kelly admitted his intention to ambush the train carrying police and four pressmen (including Melvin) from Melbourne to Glenrowan, and to kill everyone aboard. 

In 1885, after Australian troops were dispatched to the Sudan, Melvin was at first denied accreditation as a war correspondent. This did not deter him. Refused a passage on the troopship Iberia, which was carrying the Australian contingent to the war, he promptly signed on as a steward, and sailed with the troops. On disembarkation at Suakin in the Red Sea, he revealed to army authorities his identity as a newspaperman. He was then given full accreditation as a correspondent, and accompanied the contingent throughout the remainder of the campaign. 

By 1891 Melvin was in Queensland covering the great shearers’ strike for The Argus. His colleague Ernest Power wrote that Melvin disguised himself as a ‘swaggie’ as he toured the state, talking with the shearers, pastoralists, volunteers in the Queensland Mounted Infantry and non-union shearers who had travelled north from Sydney and Melbourne. At times, wrote Power, the shearers became suspicious of Melvin: he filled his pipe with cut tobacco, and the shearers traditionally used the plug variety. 

In mid-1892 Melvin tackled an assignment for which he became most famous: a report on the Pacific Islands ‘blackbird’ kanaka labour trade for Queensland cane-fields. He joined the crew of the Helena during a recruiting voyage to the Solomon Islands. His vivid account, serialised in The Argus, provided first-hand descriptions of the trade. A scrupulous witness, he wrote that the islanders had made their decisions to work in the cane-fields of their free will. No kidnapping, force or fraud was involved, he wrote. 

Melvin had panache, in spades. Once, while working for the The Age, he was assigned to cover an important speech to be delivered that day in Benalla by the Premier. As he arrived at Spencer Street he was told that the train to Benalla had just departed. Without delay, he summoned the station-master and commissioned a special train, with instructions virtually to “follow that train”. He arrived at the town hall in Benalla just as the Premier rose to give his speech. Blaming himself for his tardiness, Melvin paid the cost of the train out of his own pocket (although David Syme, when he heard about the episode, was impressed enough to reimburse him).  

An etching published in the Australasian Sketcher at the time of the Kelly confrontation showed Melvin wearing a mournful moustache and a deerstalker cap. Ernest Power described him as a quiet man, “utterly without ostentation”. 

Harry Gordon, a Melbourne Press Club Lifetime Achievement Award winner, was a war correspondent, an editor of the Sun News-Pictorial and editor-in-chief of The Herald and Weekly Times.

 

Further reading

 

'Melvin, Joseph Dalgarno (1852-1909 )', Peter Corris, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Melbourne University Press.

 

An Eyewitness History of Australia, Harry Gordon, 1976, Rigby, Adelaide.

 

The Cruise of the Helena, J.D. Melvin, P.R. Corris ed., 1977, Melbourne.