Nettie Palmer

Nettie Palmer (1885-1964), President of the Spanish Relief Committee was the public face of Melbourne’s aid for Spain movement and a recognizable voice nation-wide in her advocacy for the loyalist government throughout the Civil War. From the 1920s, Palmer was a literary critic whose lectures and commentaries were broadcast regularly on national radio, while her essays and newspaper columns on politics and Australian culture were syndicated in a stable of state and local newspapers, all of which gave legitimacy to her advocacy and opinions on international affairs. In defending Spanish democracy, she willingly addressed groups of all kinds and occasions, as exemplified in her doughty role as first speaker for the pro Spanish government’s case in the uproarious Melbourne University debate. 

Educated at Melbourne University, Nettie graduated with honours in philology and languages followed by post graduate linguistic studies in France and Germany. In 1914 she married the distinguished Australian novelist, Vance Palmer. In terms of  their foreign travel and engagement with international literary affairs, the Palmers were notable figures in the narrow provincialism of Australia at that time, however their cosmopolitanism was  combined with their activities as early proponents of an authentic national Australian literature aimed at fostering an enlightened community with narratives and poetry anchored in an authentic Australian  history and landscape. 

In June 1935 Nettie was in Paris to attend the First international Congress of the Defence of Culture after which she and Vance with their daughter Aileen settled down for a quiet writing year on the Catalan coast. It was in Mongat that they first heard about the attempted coup in Barcelona. Their daughter Aileen had found a job as an interpreter and typist in the lead up to the Anti-fascist Olympics in Barcelona, alternative to Hitler’s Olympics in Berlin. Faced with the possibility of more disorder, the British Consul urged the Palmers to join the British battleship that had been sent to take British foreigners, presumably including citizens of the Empire, to safety in England. Aileen, who was at the Anti-fascist Olympics office was horrified by her parents’ decision to depart and their insistence that she accompany them. On arrival in London she joined the first British Medical Aid Unit and returned to Spain for the duration providing sterling service as an interpreter and a medical clerk first in Aragon and later attached to the International Brigades. 

Nettie’s returned to Melbourne coincided with the arrival of the four nurses on their way to Europe. She chaired a public meeting at which they spoke about their medical mission and the need for donations.  The Melbourne Spanish Relief committee was formed that evening with Nettie unanimously appointed as its President.  For later historians of Australia and Spanish Civil War, perhaps, Nettie Palmer’s most enduring contribution is to be found in the series of  well-researched and clearly written small paperbacks  and pamphlets that she published about the Spanish civil war and the Australian volunteers in order to explain these matters to her fellow citizens and through the book sales add cash to the fund-raising purse.