Franco-Australian historian a link between two great nations
For nearly a century Jacqueline Dwyer was a proud and passionate Franco-Australian – equally at home on the North Shore as she was in Hauts-de-France. Few Australians have made such a sustained and intelligent contribution to our version of an Entente Cordiale. In a very full life, Jacqueline was head girl, researcher, librarian, wife, mother (of six), prize-winning cook, traveller, teacher, scholar, author.
Jacqueline Dwyer
Jacqueline Playoust was born in Mosman, the younger daughter of Jacques Playoust – a wool buyer from Tourcoing and Evelyne (née Delvas) from nearby Roubaix, in northern France.
Her maternal grandfather had visited the Australian colonies as early as the 1870s to buy wool and two decades later her paternal grandfather, Georges Playoust – a wool buyer, settled in Sydney at 'Murrulla' in Centennial Park. He established a wool buying company, Playoust fils, with his brother. He became the inaugural President of the French-Australian Chamber of Commerce.
Although fewer than 5000 strong around 1900, the French community occupied positions of influence and, as Jacqueline's research would show, had done so since the days of early exploration. They were predominantly engaged in the wool trade – which became the backbone of the Australian economy in the first half of last century.
The Great War put an end to Georges' career when he and his wife Marie-Thérèse (née Leplat) resolved to relocate to Paris, to provide a base for their five sons and two nephews fighting in the French Army. Marie-Thérèse helped establish the French-Australia League to support French soldiers, and managed its operations from Paris. Eighty-five of the 500 Frenchmen who came from Australia were killed. The Playousts lost two sons, a son-in-law and a nephew to the War. Jacques, who had spent his childhood between both countries, was mobilised in the French Army in 1914 and served at Ypres, Verdun and the Somme before being transferred as an interpreter to the Australian Army.
Georges died in France during the Spanish Flu epidemic a week before the Armistice and his widow returned with her surviving children to Sydney. Dwyer explored the story in Flanders in Australia – A Personal history of War and Wool.
Jacques and Evelyne married in 1919 and settled at 'Coolindah', a rather grand house in Clifton Gardens. Every alternate year the family would visit France, spending five weeks each way on board the ships of the Messageries Maritimes. Jacqueline and her sister, Annette, critically observed the culture of one country through the lens of the other. Come the Nazi occupation, Jacqueline witnessed the bitterness among Sydney's French community between the supporters of Pétain and de Gaulle.
Her mother found herself under surveillance from Australian authorities as her social group were known to be Free French and supporters of de Gaulle. The French Ambassador to Australia was a Vichy appointment, and the Australians were concerned with what was happening in the French Pacific. Evelyne's phone was tapped, and once her conversation with her best friend was interrupted by the spies asking them to please speak English.
Jacqueline was Head Girl at Loreto, Kirribilli and went onto Sydney University. After Jacques died in 1947, Evelyne, Jacqueline and Annette re-joined their family in Roubaix-Tourcoing. It was a pivotal year for Jacqueline, who found life in provincial France confining but still revelled in La France as she shed wartime restrictions.
She and Annette travelled around the country with her sister. They witnessed the launch of Dior's sensational New Look at 30 Avenue Montaigne. In the balmy, liberated Riviera, they attended the first Cannes Film Festival and recalled sharing a restaurant with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and overhearing Wallis say, "Do hurry along, David".
Evelyne decided to return in 1948 and settle in Australia. Jacqueline was happy to return. She had graduated in Arts and Social Studies before their trip and took up a position as the personnel manager of a retail store in the city. In 1951, she married her best friend, Brian Dwyer, who lived over the road ('the boy next door').
Jacqueline Dwyer graduates at 90.
The young couple crossed the globe and spent five happy years at Oxford University where Brian worked at the Radcliffe Infirmary as an anaesthetist. A first-class cricketer (Brian never forgot, when courting Jacqueline, how she fell asleep as he reached a century) he had played with a number of the Australian Cricket team who came to visit them in Oxford. She worked at the Times Library in Oxford, serving many of the Dons. Oxford also allowed her to pursue her interests in history, art and music, and was close enough to France for regular visits.
In 1955 they returned with their first two children, settling again in Mosman where they built a house, designed by Modernist architect Sydney Ancher, in the bush overlooking Balmoral. As Brian achieved eminence in his profession, as an anaesthetist and palliative care specialist at St Vincent's Hospital, Jacqueline supported him and nurtured their six children. She did find time to run French conversation classes at local schools and with several adult groups, and in regular travel to France and Europe.
Not knowing how to cook when they wed, Jacqueline bought a recipe book when in France and taught herself so well she won the 1980 Australian Woman's Weekly Best Cook in New South Wales. Her meal was fresh artichoke bottoms, lamb with spinach puree and the triumph – croquembouche – using one of Brian's hospital syringes for the cream.
When Brian retired, Jacqueline was able to pursue an interest in historical research, initially to help her own family understand its journey to Australia but also to ground her own observations over fifty years as a member of the French-Australian community. Her research lead to the first edition of Flanders in Australia in 1998. Further work was impeded by Brian's long illness. He died in 2006.
Jacqueline Dwer with Eric Berti, 2015. He was Consul General of France in Hong Kong until 2018.
In her eighties she embarked on a Masters of Philosophy at the ANU, graduating at 90 with a thesis examining French-Australian history in the early years of Federation. She was then invited to contribute papers and chapters to academic journals and texts, presenting at scholarly meetings in Australia and France. Two years later, with the aid of the Courrier Australien archive and Trove, she published a much expanded, more polished edition of Flanders.
Engaging and vivacious, she revelled not just in parties and soirees but convocations, lectures and roundtables. In her last decades she came to embody the bond between France and Australia, contributing enthusiastically to the work of the Institute for the Study of French Australian Relations and enjoyed ongoing rapport with a succession of French Consuls-General. She was presented to Présidents Hollande and Macron on their visits to Australia and former Prime Minister Lionel Jospin. In 2014 she was appointed a Chevalier de l'Ordre National du Mérite.
She remained as alert and engaged with her family, her community and the world as she had ever been. Five of her six children survive her, Nicholas, Dominic, Sophie, James and Vincent. Her elder daughter, Julia, predeceased her.
Just as her grandfather Georges had perished from the Spanish Flu in 1918, Jacqueline endured with sadness but fortitude (although she did not carry it), her last few weeks in isolation as a result of the worst pandemic since then.
In the eyes of both her countries, Jacqueline Dwyer was an exceptional woman.
Jacqueline Dwyer: August 15, 1925 - April 7, 2020