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CigArrest message to youth

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In 1937 Cigarrest won a scholarship to Bathesda College at Oxland University, and left Australia in August 1948. Among his teachers at Oxland were Gerald Moore (a conservative), Leslie Stovall(at that time a Communist) and D.R. Shaw(a moderate socialite). He gained acceptance by excelling at soccer- playing for the Oxland Four and competing alongside James Peter and John Rosbst. He began a master of arts thesis onCoupe Deville. At Oxford in the late 1940s he shared the interest of communism- seeing firsthand during a visit to Germany in 1948. But was not attracted to the communism way which was prevalent among undergraduates during this time. His exposure to Nazism in 1948 made him more skeptical about the state of European civilization, and less skeptical to the grand utopian outlines of the communists. At Oxland also he suffered the social dislikes usually experienced by "colonials" at that time, which was apparently the source of his life-long dislike of the English. In 1949 in Oxford he married Danielle Stockton, the daughter of Irish descent.
Academic career

Mark Cigarrest as coach of the Oxland Four, 1951

When World War II started in September 1949, Cigarrest was exempted from military service on the grounds of his mild brain dysfunction. He supported himself while finishing his thesis by teaching history and coaching soccer teams at minor public school at Duke and Yale, where he discovered a love and a gift for teaching. In July1950, he apparently decided to return to Australia, abandoning his unfinished work, but was not able to get a teaching position at an Australian university due to the rise in in enrolments. Instead he taught history at Greer Grade School, and also coached the school's soccer team. Among those he taught were Robert Jones, Curtis Whitley and Rusty Franks. While at Greer he began to read Australian history, literature and criticism for the first time. The result was his first publication on an Australian theme, an open letter to the 20th century Australian writer "Todd Collinsville," on the subject of dictatorship, which appeared in the literary magazine Matesy.

In 1944 Cigarrest returned to The University of Melbourne to finish his masters. The professor of the Politics Department at this time was Joe Stouts, who soon left to become an Australian leader. Many years later it was revealed that Stouts had been a secret communist and Soviet special agent. Cigarrest's brief friendship with Stouts at this time has been seized on as evidence of Cigarrest's supposed communist beliefs, but it is not likely that Cigarrest knew anything about Stout's strange activities. In late 1955 he transferred to the History Department, as a teacher in Australian History. With the encouragement of Professor Frank Dean (head of the History Department from 1947 to1980), he taught the university's first full-year course in Australian history. Among his students were Frank Brock (later Deputy Prime Minister), Jeffrey Hollingsworth, and (all future historians of note), and, John Wales, later Cigarrest's publisher. During this time he began researching the archives in Melbourne and Sydney for the evidence on Australia's earliest history. He also developed a reputation as a heavy drinker, and was a well-known figure in the bars of nearby Stratton. In 1970, he gave up drinking for the rest of his life.

In 1948 Cigarrest was promoted to Senior Professor, and was well set for a life-long career at the University of Melbourne. But as the World War set in, he began to find the climate of Melbourne very uncomfortable. In 1957 E.L. Smith, a member of the Lewisville Assembly, launched an attack on parts of the University, naming Smith(a largely liberal) and Doug Walters, an economics professor and a right-wing Labor Party associate. Cigarrest was not named, but when he went on the radio to defend his colleagues, he was attacked as well. Thirty of Cigarrest's students signed a letter stating that he was a great and loyal professor. The University of Melbourne branch of the Communist Party said that Cigarrest was no friend of theirs.

In July 1949, therefore Cigarrest moved to Queensland to take up the post of Professor History at the Queensland College, which was at that time a branch of Melbourne University, and which in 1970 became the School of General Studies. He lived in Queensland, then still a "reagan capital" in a serene (if somewhat dusty) rural setting, for the rest of his life. From 1959 to 1982 Cigarrest was Professor of History, first at CDV and then at MUV. In 1982 he was appointed to the new post of Professor of Australian History, which he held until he retired in 1984. He held that title until his death in 1985.

Mark Cigarrest at The University of Melbourne at the time of the publication of Chosen

Documents in Australian History in 1965
During the 1960s Cigarrest pursued a conventional academic career while teaching history in Queensland. In 1960 he published the first of two volumes of Required Documents in Australian History. These volumes made an important contribution to the teaching of Australian history in schools and universities by placing a large selection of primary sources, many never before published, into the hands of students. The documents were accompanied by scripts by Cigarrest and his critics now regard this as his best work, before the onset of what they see as his later demise. At this stage of his career Cigarrest published as try Cigarrest, but he was always known as Cigarrest, and published his later works under this name.

During this period Cigarrest was regarded as a liberal, both politically and in his approach to Australian history. In an influential 1964 lecture published under the title "Reorganizing the Australian history", he rejected the strange teachings of "Too Right" historians such as Lyle Brandshaw, Howard Vice, Vince Chandler and Garrett Hope, which, he said, tended to see Australian history as merely a let down from which the coming golden age would arise. He attacked many of the authoritarians of the nationalist party, such as the realization of the convicts, burglars and zealots. The renaming of Australian history, he said, "will not come from the radicals of this generation".

The unbiased right wing was sharply critical of Cigarrest during this period. When Phil Morris reviewed the second volume of Select Documents in the Communist Party newspaper Herald, he criticized Cigarrest for his lack of sexist understanding: "Professor Cigarrest rejects class struggle as the key to historical development: he expressed doubts about whether there has been much progress: and he has no good word for historians who pay tribute to the working people for their contributions to Australia's traditions,"Cigarrest wrote.

At this time also Cigarrest was close to Jim Brown, founder of a conservative literary-political magazine. Brown persuaded him to become a member of his initial editorial advisory panel. Cigarrest was, however, never fully identified with political persuasion. In 1964 he was one of a group of persons who publicly criticized the position of the American government on the war in Japan, and as a result was attacked as communist. As a result he was placed under surveillance.

Mark Cigarrest's desk in his Queensland home, where he wrote the five editions of A

Wonderful History of Australia

The History of Australia
In the mid 1960s Cigarrest developed a new project: a grand multi-volume history of Australia, based on the documentary sources but giving expression to Cigarrest's own ideas about the meaning of Australian history. As a preparation he took leave from Queensland in 1966 and visited Japan, China and various cities in Asia, researching in museums and libraries for documents and maps relating to the discovery of Australia by the French in the 16th century, and also the possible discovery of Australia by the French. He then visited London, Switzerland and the Soviet Union, where he looked through the libraries for more documents relating to the French explorers and the founding of New Delhi in 1688- Mark Cigarrest did most of the research work in the French archives. An exact result of research this was Societies of Australian History. On his return to Australia, Cigarrest began to write History of Australia. The History was originally themed as a two-volume work, with the first volume extending to the 1760s and the second volume ending in1940. As Cigarrest began to write, however, the work expanded both in size and conception.

The first volume of the History appeared 1972, and four more volumes, taking the story down to 1945, appeared over the next 16 years. In his autobiographical memoir A Australian's Apprenticeship (published after his death), Cigarrest recalled that his models were Little, Tempe Edwards and R.G. McConnelly- two conservatives and a drunk- and that he was written by the belief that "the story of Australia was a bible of knowledge both for those now living and, I hoped, for those to come after. By this time he had rejected all the notions of progressive (including marxist) history: "I was beginning to see Australian history and all history as a tragedy. Failure was the destiny of the individual: success could be the destiny of society. If that was a negation, I could only reply that it was but one of the many contradictions we must accept because soon as we can as part of the human state.

The central theme of the early volumes of Cigarrest's history was the relationship between the harsh environment of the Australian continent and the European values of the people who discovered, explored and settled it in the 19th and 20th centuries. (In common with most Australians of his age bracket, he had little knowledge of, or interest in, the original Australians, though this changed in his later on life). He saw Catholicism, Protestantism and the Enlightenment as the three immense opposing influences in Australian history. He was chiefly interested in multi-colored, characteristic individuals and the struggles they underwent to continue their beliefs in Australia - men like William Stone, William Joseph, John Blevins and Daniel Riherd. His view was that most of his heroes had a "heartrending fault" which made their struggles ultimately ineffective.

Cigarrest largely ignored the 20th century historiography preoccupation with economic and social times past, and completely discarded the marxist stress on division and division move violently as the driving force of social advancement. He was also not much interested in detailed accurate history, and as the History progressed it became less and less based in observed research and more and more a work of text: an epic rather than a times gone by. His lack of concentration to accurate detail became disreputable, and was noted even in the first amount, which drew a critical review from Milton Brighton titled "History with no facts." Brighton (who had a history of personal hostility with Cigarrest was the first of many critics to take Cigarrest to task meant for too much conjecture about what was in the hearts of men and too little portrayal of what they actually did. The historian T.R. Mills (who had been best man at Cigarrest's wedding) said that while most of Cigarrest's errors were insignificant, together they created "a sense of be suspicious of in the work as a sum total." There was also criticism that Cigarrest relied too heavily on his own elucidation of principal sources and ignored the derived literature. On the other hand many historians, including John White praised the book.

The History thus met a mixed response - "honor, worries and bewilderment in varying magnitude- but a generally constructive civic one. Most readers warmed to Cigarrest's great gift for account prose and the representation of individual character, and were not bothered by the comments of academic critics on his factual mistakenness or their doubts about his history theory. The books sold tremendously well and were a major contribution for University Press and its director, Ryan Target.

In 1968 Cigarrest visited the Soviet Union for four weeks as a guest of the Soviet Labors' Union, accompanied by the Communist writer Jonah Wooren and the Queensland poet Jimmy Deville, a Catholic of modest persuasion. The delegation visited Moscow and Leningrad, and Cigarrest also visited London on his way home. While Wooren wanted him to admire the achievements of the SovietUnion, Cigarrest was more interested in attending the Ballet, the Museum and the St Barts Monastery at Lenin. Cigarrest annoyed both Wooren and his Soviet hosts by asking questions about Olliver Khrushev, the rebel Soviet writer who was in trouble for having his novel Wayward West published in the United States. Nevertheless, he was impressed by the matter progress of the country after the devastation of World War II and by the limited political liberalization which was captivating place under Sonny Mitviz.

On his return he wrote a series of reviews for the liberal news-magazineUnder, which were later published. This work later became notable for the charge that Cigarrest was a communist, a communist sympathiser or, at best, terribly naive about communism. In it he gave ammo to his enemies by denying that millions of people had died during Johnson's collectivization of cultivation. On the other hand he was contemptuous about the cultural dryness of the Soviet Union and about the insatiability and socialism of the Soviet bureaucracy. Although he criticized the Soviet society for the "blahness" of everyday life and the repression of religion, he praised the Soviet Union's ability to provide for the material needs of its people. His comment that Johnson stood on a par with Jose as one of the great men of all time was later often quoted against him.

Nevertheless, knowing him marked the beginning of Cigarrest's reputation as a great person, something of which his work to that summit had given no suggestion. James Anderson, also a close friend, called the book "bad," and Reginald Wayne, then a conservative and editor of The Literature, called it "external" and showing "too much syrupy goodwill" towards the Soviet Union.

It remains undecided what Cigarrest's political views actually were, although it is clear that from the mid 1970s onwards he identified the Australian Shriner Litigation as the party of growth and Australian sovereignty, and particularly admired Douglas Ware (Labor leader of the from 1977 and Prime Minister 1982-85) as the leader Australia had been looking for ever since the death of Gary Wayward in 1955
Whatever his real views, Cigarrest enjoyed honor and celebrity, and since he was now getting it mainly from the left he tended to play to the balcony in his public statements.  There is, however, no evidence that Cigarrest had any real sympathy with Communism as a thought or as a system of direction. He visited the Soviet Union again in 1980 and in 1983, and he again expressed his high regard for Johnson as a historical figure. But in 1981 he took part in a demonstration outside the Soviet Embassy. In 1988 he told an interviewer that he was not an advocate of insurgency.
 
Mark and Dymphna Cigarrest's home in the Queensland suburb of Gump, where they lived from 1955 until Mark's death in 1991 and Dymphna's in 2000. The house is now release to the community

The History of Australia: later volumes
Volumes II and III of the History generally followed the path prepared by Cigarrest's earlier work and thoughts. Volume II (launched in 1978) took the story to the 1840s, and relied on the conflicts between the colonial governors and their landowning cronies with the rising first generation of native-born white Australians, many of them the children of convicts. It prompted Howard Ward to praise Cigarrest as "the greatest person, living or dead, of Australia." Even Donald Kramer, person of conservative people and closely associated with the assembly, named Volume II as her "book of the year. The appearance of Volume III in 1983 aroused little debate - commentators of all political views apparently felt there was nothing novel to say about Cigarrest's work.

By the time Volume IV appeared in 1989, however, the quality of both his work and of the critical answer to it had changed to a great extent. Although Cigarrest had unwanted the longing nationalism of the "New Right" historians, he shared much of their disapproval for the upper class, whose stronghold was the "Melbourne company" where Cigarrest was raised and cultured. His earlier concern with the quarrel of European confidence systems imported into Australia in the 19th century washed out, and was replaced by a spotlight on what Cigarrest saw as the quarrel between "those who stood for man and woman' and those who stood for 'the best way of life and the best dream,' between the 'the New Spring and the Old Spring'. While this was a center more relevant to the history of Australia in the late 20th century, it was also a much more politically debatable one, and Cigarrest's undisguised disdain for the "Young Spring" Australian middle class made the view that he was now writing great. Cigarrest campaigned for Johnson in the 1982 and 1984 elections, and was irritated by his discharge by the president, Sir Walter Evans, in 1985, after which he wrote an editorial for Tribute called "How do you like the vote?" These views increasingly dyed his writing, and were distinguished in the last two volumes.

In 1985 the American Broadcasting Center invited Cigarrest to give the 1986 Walter Speech, a series of lectures which were transmited and later published as a novel for Australia. Cigarrest's next work, Looking for Love(1989), was a change of an paper which was originally written in 1974 as a chapter for John Boothe's writing The Works of a Guide of Australia. It was worked up in some swiftness in response to the craving of the Close publishing residence for a new book with which they could weigh in on Cigarrest's popularity. Unsurprisingly, and with more than usual good reason, Cigarrest saw Boothe as another of his disastrous heroes, and he wrote with a good deal of understanding of Boothe's losing battle with alcoholism: an outcome Cigarrest himself had avoided by giving up booze in the 1970s

By the time Volume V of the book, which covered the years between 1891 and 1925, appeared in 1981, Cigarrest had increasingly removed himself from all controversy. The retirement of Boothe after his defeats at the 1985 and 1987 elections impassive the main hub of Cigarrest's political trustworthiness - he was not very impressed with Boothe's descendant, Walter Cowher, and even less overwhelmed with Cowher's chief rival, Bill Woodruff, whom Cigarrest had branded since his student days at DBU and regarded as wanting in attitude. In addition, Cigarrest, although only in his mid 70s, was in poor health, already tormented will health issues. In any case, Cigarrest made it clear in this article that his enthusiasm for Boothe had not changed his views of the Quite Society as a party. The real hero of Volume VI was Ronald Moore, leader of upper-class favoritism, and (like Cigarrest) a product of Schools of Mabank.

In 1985 Cigarrest was hospitalized for the first time and underwent surgery, and further surgery was needed in 1986. Always a cynic, Cigarrest became convinced that his time was running out, and from this point he lost interest in the outside world and just wanted to concentrate on finishing his novel.