The Battle of Mordialloc

The Battle of Mordialloc

The Battle of Mordialloc, or How We Lost Australia is the tale of a combined Russian/Chinese invasion of Australia in 1888. In the book, Maitland describes Mordialloc as: a small watering township some sixteen or seventeen miles from Melbourne (p. 40).

The story is told from the perspective of Herbert Ainslie who was a Victorian Government surveyor at the time of the invasion. Ainslie describes ‘his’ Australia in glowing terms: Our rapidly increasing population was prosperous and contented. Perhaps in no part of the world were the artisan and labouring classes better paid, better clothed and fed, or more comfortably housed than ours (p. 8).

He also reports that it was a time of increased desire for the states to be independent from each other and from Britain. The book’s bleak tone and graphic descriptions make it clear that Maitland intended The Battle of Mordialloc to be a cautionary tale against this growing separatist sentiment. David Walker, in his book Anxious Nation: Australia and the Rise of Asia 1850-1939, describes it as telling ‘the story of a people cut adrift from Britain, easy prey to a combined force of Russian and Chinese invaders’ (pp. 104-105).

The serious matter of Australian’s growing dissatisfaction with being linked to Britain and consequently to political and military situations on the opposite side of the world, combined with an ever-increasing desire for independence is expressed humorously in the book by an unnamed Victorian politician who states: England, France, Germany and the rest of them may go on exterminating one another in their own cockpits, for aught we care. We shall send them as much wool and frozen meat as they may require to keep up the game. (Loud cheers and laughter.) Our course is clear. We are strong enough, as I have already said, to hold our own (p. 21).

Unfortunately, they were not strong enough to hold their own when they were invaded by Russian and Chinese troops via an unexpected route. The invaders had landed at Hastings on the eastern side of the Mornington Peninsula and made their way overland to Melbourne, through Mordialloc; they had been expected to approach from the south, through Port Phillip Heads. It was at Mordialloc that the troops, numbering about 6000 and consisting of both hastily assembled regular army and barely-trained volunteers, were defeated when the 50,000-strong invading Russian and Chinese troops proceeded towards Melbourne, following their entry into Victoria.

Ainslie, the story’s narrator, manages to escape back to Melbourne following the Mordialloc battle but the city’s inhabitants’ freedom is short-lived as first the Chinese and then the Russians take possession of the city. Ainslie eloquently articulates the distress and despair of being invaded thus: Our city in flames, our people slaughtered by the thousand, our fleet captured or sunk, and all hope of succour gone, there was nothing for it but to drink the cup of humiliation to its very dreg. One after another the other colonies fell before the invaders, till — of the mighty continent which had hitherto owned our mastery — we could not call a single foot our own (pp. 66-67).

The Battle of Mordialloc, or How We Lost Australia was originally published anonymously but has since been attributed to Edward Maitland (1824-1897), an Englishman who lived in various countries and undertook a diverse range of occupations including trainee Calvinist minister, novelist and civil servant.