Arthur Desmond - Emigration To Australia

Emigration To Australia

On 10 Oct 1892 Arthur Desmond forever left New Zealand behind when he walked down the gangplank of the S.S. Houroto into Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The truth of Arthur Desmond’s emigration from New Zealand is summed up by Len Fox, who in his 1968 article observed that Desmond "seems to have had no particular love for any country". But Desmond did have an unquenchable thirst for political activism and social agitation, and upon arriving in Sydney he became associated with William Morris Hughes, later Prime Minister of Australia during WWI. Desmond collaborated with Hughes on a political broadsheet which evolved into the radical periodical they entitled The New Order, and he became part of the circle surrounding McNamara's Bookshop at 221 Castlereagh Street (demolished in 1922), associating with Louisa Lawson and her son Henry, Jack Lang, Tommy Walker and Alfred Deakin, also later Prime Minister before WWI. Then on 11 June 1893 the first issue of a new periodical instigated by Desmond and Lang appeared under the name of Hard Cash, a seditious and provocative publication that was printed in a secret location, and promoting the "Active Service Brigade" devoted to disrupting political rallies of opponents: a practice which eventually necessitated Desmond's fleeing the country with warrants out for his arrest. Henry Lawson composed a poem which appeared in the New Zealand periodical Fair Play in Wellington on 30 Dec 1893 in defense of Desmond in December 1893, which reads in part:

ARTHUR DESMOND
They are stoning Arthur Desmond, and, of course its understood
By the people of New Zealand that he isn't any good.
He's a plagarist, they tell us, and a scamp - but after all,
He is fighting pretty plucky with his back against the wall.

They are damning Arthur Desmond for the battle that he fought -
For his awful crime in saying what so many people thought.
He was driven from the country - but I like to see fair play -
and to slander absent brothers - why it ain't New Zealand's way.

Once I met Arthur Desmond "and I took him by the hand",
But I scarcely think the action spoilt my chance for the Promised Land;
And I think of Arthur gazing, with his earnest, thoughtful eyes,
Out beyond the brighter ages that we cannot realize.