Discours à l’occasion de la remise des insignes de
Chevalier de l’Ordre du Mérite à
Madame Jacqueline Dwyer, historienne et écrivaine
Sydney, le 24 décembre 2014
« Dear Jacqueline,
Dear Friends,
It is a great pleasure to welcome today in this consulate Jacqueline Dwyer and her large family and friends. We are gathered to bestow on Jacqueline the medal of knight of the French National Order of Merit. As you may know, the National order of Merit was created by the Général de Gaulle a little more than fifty years ago to reward distinguished military or civil services provided to the French Republic. Jacqueline deserves more than anybody this prestigious distinction for her outstanding action in the study and the memory of our bilateral relations.
Jacqueline is indeed a great personality of the French community in Sydney. I was lucky enough to meet Jacqueline just a few months after my arrival in Sydney, on the Remembrance day in November 2012. We had just decided to organize a commemoration on the honorary board of the consulate devoted to the French-Australian who died for France during the First world war and I heard about a French lady who had written a book about the wool buyers during the first world war. I found just two days before the ceremony your book in the bookshelves of the consulate and I was stunned by the work of research that you had extended to write it, and how incredible was your contribution and the contribution of the Playoust family to our bilateral relations. Dear Jacqueline, you were the guest of honour of the commemoration of the memory of these soldiers in 2012 and since that time, you remain the guest of honour of all these celebrations.
I think therefore that Jacqueline is a Living Treasury of France in Australia, as would say our Japonese friends. In fact, there is no other personality in Sydney who represents as well as Jacqueline the depth and the strength of the bonds between Australia and France since the XIXth century.
Jacqueline is fully Australian. She was born in Mosman, just a few years ago (you look so young !) ; Jacqueline studied in Sydney University, being awarded a bachelor of Arts and a diploma of Social Studies. You worked as a personnel officer and also as a librarian. You are indeed fond of books and fond of Historical studies, specially the history of French-Australian relations.
Besides, dear Jacqueline, you are also perfectly French. You were born form French parents : Jacques and Evelyne (better known as “Zine”) Playoust, and your grand-parents were the famous Georges and Marie-Thérèse Playoust, paramount figures of the French community in the end of the XIXth century and the beginning of the XXth century. Your grand father arrived in Australia in 1889 in Melbourne as a wool buyer and then settled in Sydney. Along with his brother Joseph, Georges was among the most respected wool buyers in New South Wales.
The Playoust families were really a driving force of the French community of that period. Georges chaired the new-born French chamber of commerce for several years and was the first French councellor of foreign trade in Australia. Marie-Thérèse was very active in the benevolent society and created in 1914, after the beginning of the first world war, the French-Australian League of Help to assist soldiers on the Front and families. This league was very active during all the Great war and revived during the second world war, with your mother Zine Playoust as co-President.
Your family payed a heavy tribute to the Great War. You lost four uncles between 1914 and 1918 : Alfred Decouvelaere, Jean, Stéphane and Marcel Playoust died during the War and René died a few years later. Your father Jacques survived a typhoid, the fights in Somme, in Verdun, and even a shipwreck in India, before coming back to Australia after the war and founding with his brother Maurice the wool buying company “Playoust fils”, which offices were located near Circular Quay. Your family settled in Mosman, the city where you were born and which remains your hometown today. When you were young, you enjoyed every second year a return trip to France in Roubaix, in the family of your mother Evelyne, along with your family, parents and elder brothers and sisters. Your first trip on the Ormonde was in 1926, when you were just one year old. It was the time of the sailor suits for the boys and the Cloche hat for the girls.
The period between the two wars was however shadowed by the economic crisis, in 1932/33 and the rise of incertainty in Europe, which led to the second world war. Your father Jacques became a support of the Free French in Sydney, along with André Brenac, with the Sydney branch of the Alliance française as headquarter and the Courrier Australien as press organ. After the war and the death of your father Jacques, your mother stayed in Mosman and took care of her family.
You married in 1951 Brian Dwyer, a brilliant anaesthesist who was a pioneer of anaesthesia, intensive care and pain management and was also an outstanding clinician, teacher and researcher. Brian became the president of the Australian society of Anaesthesist and also the Dean of the faculty of Anaesthesist. He passed away in 2006 but I am sure that he is with us today to honour is beloved wife. Together, you had six children :
Nicholas, Julia, Dominic, Sophie, James and Vincent and ten grand children. All are here today to honor you !
Jacqueline, you have inherited of the prestigious Playoust family, but you have not passively received this legacy : you have perpetuated it through your remarkable book : Flanders in Australia, that you published in 1998 and which is unfortunately today out of print. This book enlights the deep bonds created between France and Australia through the action of the wool buyers.
As said Peter Curtis, former Ambassador of Australia in France, through this book, you have “ brought a new dimension and filled a gap in our knowledge and understanding of the modern Australian cultural heritage. More broadly, the book is striking evidence of the essential relationship between our two countries, which have so much in common that they stood side by side without hesitation during the two world wars.”Your book was also the basis for the exhibition » vive la difference » that you organized with the National Library of NSW in 2004, and which has illustrated the importance of the action of the French community in Australia at the beginning of the century.I must say that today, you continue to contribute to a better understanding of the history of the French-Australian relations through your work in the Institute for studies on French- Australian relations (Isfar), for instance through your recent contribution on the French-Australian League of Help, in the last French-Australian review. You are also preparing a memoire on the French Australian relations for the Australian National University and you contribute regularly to seminars in France or in Australia about the role of wool buyers during the two world wars, or about French-Australian relations.In other words, you remain very young and an incredibly active as a tireless researcher. I am happy to have today with us prominent members of our little club of historians of ISFAR, around Ivan Barko. I know that the thoughts of Edward and Margaret are with us today. Thank you also, dear Jacqueline, to have accepted to contribute, to a project of anthology of the most prominent French of Australia and of course, your family deserves a special place in this book.I am glad therefore today to say to all your family, gathered around you, and loving you, how they can be proud of you and how you fully deserve this distinction that the French President has granted to you.
Jacqueline Dwyer, au nom du Président de la République, nous vous nommons Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Mérite ».
Eric Berti
Ancien consul général à Sydney (2012-2015)
Discussion à ce sujet post