Who picks our heroes?

THE shemozzle surrounding the belated award of a Victoria Cross to Tasmanian sailor Teddy Sheean raises pertinent questions about who chooses our heroes and why.

Sheean’s brave and valiant deed in giving the last moments of his life to save his fellow Royal Australian Navy seamen in World War II was incontrovertibly heroic — anyone aware of Sheean’s courageous and decisive final act knows that as a fact, not least the sailors who witnessed his bravery and returned home to loved ones as a result.

I won’t repeat details of his heroics here, they have been told so often in the fight to get him awarded a VC that finally ended in success this week, other than to say that he paid the ultimate sacrifice in circumstances where lesser mortals would be justifiably excused for curling up in foetal position to face their demise in a moment of prayer, reflection or sheer bloody terror.

Since we’ve all long known and accepted Sheean as a war hero, why was it so important to have it acknowledged officially? How does the posthumous award of a VC change anything?

Clearly it does mean something, and for most, myself included, it was an injustice bordering on insult that officialdom stood so firmly and so long against it.

Sheean’s valour is now written into history as a matter of the highest cultural significance, beyond folklore and family tales and, most importantly, beyond dispute. Official recognition endows Sheean’s legend with a ceremonial and ritualistic element of chivalry similar to that instituted in the medieval system of knighthood and its elevated religious, moral and social code of conduct.

Such acknowledgment is vitally important to societies.

Cultural adornments such as the Pope’s grandiose white silk mitre and golden staff, or the accoutrements of the pharaohs, or the Queen’s diamondencrusted crown and sceptre, exalt their wearers so as to inspire respect and reflection in the masses. Sheean’s VC can now work the same magic.

Of course, heroes and legends can thrive without official certification. The legend of bushranger Ned Kelly remains stubbornly heroic in Australian lore, despite being regarded by authorities as little more than an outlaw and murderer. Kelly and his family gang represent something significant and admirable to many. His antiauthoritarian resistance and devil-may-care daring tap into deep-seated feelings about the inequity and injustice of the oppression of working classes.

Authorities of the day pilloried Kelly and his family, putting forward a vastly different version of his crimes than ever admitted to by the outlaw himself, who once defiantly and flamboyantly described the police as “a parcel of big ugly fat-necked wombat headed, big bellied, magpie legged, narrow hipped, splaw-footed sons of Irish bailiffs or English landlords”.

Never the twain shall meet, it appears. Kelly’s story will forever be in dispute between the authorities and the working class. Legend has it that his final words before being hung by the neck were “such is life”, suggesting he remained unbowed and unbroken to the very end.

And therein lies the rub — one person’s hero is not necessarily another’s.

When the statue of former Tasmanian premier William Crowther was erected in Hobart’s Franklin Square in 1889, it was met with a rousing three cheers. The statue’s inscription said it all: “By a grateful public, and sincere personal friends, to perpetuate the memory of long and zealous political and professional service in this colony by William Lodewyk Crowther.”

However, this hero’s reception jarred with the fact that just 20 years earlier Dr Crowther mutilated the remains of William Lanney, believed at the time to have been the last Tasmanian Aboriginal man. A whaler, once introduced to the Duke of Edinburgh as the King of the Tasmanians, Lanney died in the Dog and Partridge Hotel in West Hobart. He was taken to the morgue where, under the cover of dark, Dr Crowther stole in unofficially, severed and skinned Lanney’s skull, and in a macabre attempt to cover up his bloody deed, replaced it with that of a dead schoolmaster. He later argued he took Lanney’s bones for scientific and historic purposes, and was supported in his claim by columnists in the Mercury.

It’s hardly surprising the Tasmanian Aboriginal community and many others today struggle to see beyond these ghoulish events to find any heroism in Dr Crowther. Who were the real savages? Who were the headhunters?

What would be the response to the erection of a statue in Franklin Square of legendary Tasmanian Aboriginal resistance fighter Manalargenna, or fearsome tribal leader Walyer, the Aboriginal woman from the North-West who terrified her enemies, led a vicious and bloody fight against colonial invasion, and confessed to liking the white man about as much as a black snake?

Walyer was feared and respected by her people, and was ferociously heroic, which raises another issue — was she a hero or a heroine? Modern convention suggests we do not use the feminine term because in a man’s world it could suggest something less worthy than a male hero.

However, the most amazing display of heroism I have witnessed is that of my mother, who gave up her teaching career, her love of the theatre and heaven knows what else to devote her life to her four children. (I’ve seen grainy black and white images of her performing in the limelight looking strikingly like a hybrid of Lauren Bacall and Grace Kelly).

While Teddy Sheean decided in a few remarkable seconds to spend his last breaths defending his mates, Mum has had her entire life to doubt, dwell on or regret her selfless choice to devote herself to the wellbeing of her family, but I’ve never heard her complain once.

Even as she battles the broken hips and medical dramas that inevitably come with old age, Mum is more likely to stress and grumble about me not taking enough pride in how I dress than her own pain or suffering.

“Oh, Simon, you’ll get nowhere looking like that,” she still shakes her head.

Mum’s is not a fashionable heroism. By some standards it’s not even politically correct.

The American police officer who dragged an elderly man from the path of a train in California this week after his wheelchair stuck in the tracks is a more likely candidate. Her actions were seriously brave. But is there a more enduring and selfless act than being a full-time mum, or a full-time dad for that matter? I guess it depends on who you ask.

Heroism, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.