Ray Parkin

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For the English footballer, see Ray Parkin (footballer).

Raymond Edward Parkin

AM (6 November 1910 – 19 June 2005) was an Australian naval seaman, writer, draftsman, artist and historian. He is noted for his memoirs of World War II (including his time as a prisoner-of-war), and for a major work on James Cook
's Endeavour voyage.

Early life

Parkin was born in the

sea scouts. He also became interested in art and drawing (especially the drawing of ships), and after leaving school at age 14, he took a job at an engraving
firm.

In 1928, aged 18, he joined the

World's Fair, after which the vessel saw service in World War II
.

World War II

Parkin began writing during his war service. He started a novel, which was lost when Perth was sunk by Japanese action in the Sunda Strait in the early hours of 1 March 1942.

After about 11 hours in the water, Parkin and nine other survivors washed up on a small island. They found a steel lifeboat and rigged a sail and tried to get back to Australia. Over 16 days, covering 500 miles, they managed to slip past enemy shipping and endured tropical storms before reaching occupied

Tjilatjap
where they were greeted by Dutch Officers, who handed them over to Japanese troops.

In June 1942, Parkin was imprisoned in

Bandoeng camp. There he met Dutch soldier and author Laurens van der Post and they became friends. Among other prisoners with an interest in art was Dutch artist Keis von Willigen
, and together they would source paper from wherever they could. Van der Post managed to get Parkin a set of watercolour paints from a Chinese contact and with these he would create portraits of fellow prisoners.

In November 1942, Parkin was among the "Dunlop 1,000", a group of prisoners under the authority of Australian army surgeon

Jack Chalker
, recorded the horrors of the camps.

In March 1944, Parkin was among a group of prisoners selected to be shipped to Japan. He couldn't keep his collection of drawings and diary notes concealed on that trip, so Dunlop offered to look after them for him. Dunlop had a false bottom in his operating table, where he could hide things like Chalker's medical drawings and Parkin's collection of artworks & papers.

Parkin ended up working in an underground coal mine near the Japanese village of Ohama and remained there until the Japanese surrender in August 1945.

Post war experience

Back in Melbourne and reunited with his wife and children, he went to work as a tally clerk on the wharves. Weary Dunlop had kept his drawings, and Parkin made them into a little volume dedicated to Dunlop. Some of the sketches were printed in Dunlop's published diaries about the camps.

Parkin too wrote about his experiences as a prisoner-of-war. His memoirs he wrote in novel form; the character of John (or Jack) is Parkin in all but name. Sir Laurens van der Post recommended them to the Hogarth Press in London, and these were published as Out of the Smoke (1960) Into the Smother (1963), and The Sword and the Blossom (1968). The books were praised for the simple and direct quality of the writing.

He continued to work on the Melbourne waterfront till retirement in 1975.

H. M. Bark Endeavour

In 1967, Parkin started researching James Cook's voyage to Australia aboard HM Bark Endeavour. He was first inspired by an inaccurate picture of the ship when searching for a representation on which to base a Christmas card. Over the years he discovered and dispelled several misconceptions built up about Cook, his crew, and the ship, including rehabilitating the reputation of Sydney Parkinson's drawings of the ship.

Parkinson was a

shipwrights
to have some freedom in how plans were executed). Some of Parkins research was done in London.

Parkin's neighbour, history professor

Melbourne University Press
.

The result was H. M. Bark Endeavour published in two volumes in 1997. It won the Douglas Stewart Prize for non-fiction and the NSW Book of the Year in the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards for 1999.[1] Parkin thought himself a little out of place at the awards ceremony, as he put it, "It was funny, though, this doddering old bloke who used to work on the wharves–what did I have in common with the intellectual literary crowd?".[2]

Parkin died in Melbourne on 19 June 2005. He was survived by his three children, six grand-children and eight great-grandchildren.

In 2005, Parkin's three wartime memoirs were republished in a single paperback volume by Melbourne University Publishing. The volume was reviewed by critic Max Harris who described it as, “probably the finest POW writing in English.”[3]

A biography of Parkin, Ray Parkin's Odyssey, by Pattie Wright, was published in 2012.[4]

Bibliography

References

  1. ^ Past winners Premier's Literary Awards, at the New South Wales Ministry for the Arts
  2. ^ An interview with Ray Parkin by Murray Waldren, after the Premier's Literary Awards
  3. ^ On a POW’s survival, mup.com.au, retrieved 24 October 2019
  4. ^ Ray Parkin’s Odyssey, panmacmillon.com.au retrieved 24 October 2019
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