Happily, Sir John was found the next day, face down in a planter box in an adjoining garden. Sir John’s family may have had some sympathy for Lougheed this week when they discovered a splinter group of Coalition politicians determined to protect and promote the coal industry in Australia had named themselves the Monash Forum. The group, comprised of Tony Abbott, Kevin Andrews, Eric Abetz, and Barnaby Joyce, among others, were lobbying for a new $4 billion coal-fired station in Victoria, as a response, they said, to concerns about rising power prices. Members of the Monash Forum include Craig Kelly, Eric Abetz, Tony Abbott, Barnaby Joyce and Kevin Andrews. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Seven members of the Monash family wrote to ask them to stop using the title. It was not just impolite, they wrote, but inappropriate and incorrect for a forward-thinking intellectual and scientific general and engineer such as Sir John to be associated with the group's plans. Such a man, they explained, would not have favoured propping up old technologies that science would not support, and which could require substantial subsidisation to profit.

"At the very least,” they said, “it was discourteous to use it without informing us. More than that, we disassociate ourselves specifically from the forum's use of the Monash name to give their anti-science and anti-intellectual argument an air of authority and we ask that they withdraw the name.” They continued: "While Monash himself was no left-wing radical in his personal politics, he was intellectual and scientific. He certainly led the development of coal for power generation in Victoria for the benefit of the community, but that was in the context of the time almost a century ago, when coal-fired electrical generation was the leading technology. “We are sure that, today, he would be a proponent of the new technologies, eg: wind and solar generation, rather than revert to the horse-and-buggy era.” Loading Historians frequently find themselves with their face in their palms, so often is history twisted, forgotten, misremembered and misapplied in public debate.

But some weeks are worse than others. The Monash blunder seemed particularly odd because Abbott has so long advocated for a better understanding of conventional figures in history, urging more study of prime ministers and an end to the practice of “politicising” history. Liberal MP Kevin Andrews is keen to keep the name, insisting it honours the man - the same way groups like the Martin Luther King Militia might honour the civil rights leader who was killed 50 years ago, or say, the Germaine Greer Men’s Rights Group would honour their namesake, or perhaps, the Windsor Family Republicans would bring glory to the royal family. The mauling of history is always a source of deep discomfort for those who labour in archives and over footnotes to get every detail right. And politicising history always endangers an accurate reading of it. This has occurred most obviously with Indigenous history, still in some quarters a source of conflict and not a source of pride, a subject to brag about: the oldest living history.

Take the stunning Indigenous performances in the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games. Broadcaster Alan Jones said the opening ceremony was “apologetic, ingratiating, knee-bending rubbish”. He tweeted: “This was an opportunity to celebrate Australia. Aboriginal Australians are not the whole story, they’re part of Australia’s history. A history which is meant to be shared with all of us.” Author George Megalogenis responded: “OK, let's do the numbers on this one: Aboriginal Australians = 65,000-year history; Anglo, Celtic, European, Asian Australians = 230-year history; Aboriginal Australians = 100% of Australia's history; the rest of us = 0.4% of Australia's history.” Aboriginal Australians perform a smoking ceremony during the opening ceremony for the Commonwealth Games. Credit:AP The night after taking part in the ceremony, Rory O’Connor, the director of the Yugambeh Museum in Beenleigh, was on a natural, sleep-deprived high. There had been 4500 performers on stage, he said on ABC’s The Drum, and about 300 of them were Indigenous: “It was new, fresh different and our story – the feeling of camaraderie was amazing.”