Albany's man of books

Douglas Sellick knows his way around a library.

The affable Albany anthologist and author is responsible for seven mostly nautical-themed books, all the result of years of painstaking research.

Mr Sellick just got back from a book signing at the WA Museum for his latest work, about the fight between the HMAS Sydney and the SMS Emden in 1914, just nine days after the fleet left from Albany.

Mr Sellick was born in Bridgetown in 1936, and grew up in Albany, attending the now defunct Greenstead Boys School and later Albany High School.

After holding various positions with shipping company P&O in Perth, Sydney and London between 1954 and 1967, Mr Sellick decided to try his hand at something new.

“I’d been working in shipping for yonks but they were fading fast because aeroplanes were taking over, and I suppose I could see the writing on the wall,” he said.

“I was living in London at the time, and living in London one is surrounded by history and art and all the rest of it, so I decided to do a fine arts diploma.”

During his time at the University of London, his tutors realised he had a special aptitude for research and persuaded him to develop his skills.

“I ended up as a research assistant at the Mansell Collection in London, which was a library of photographs and prints and illustrations of every subject from agriculture to zoology,” he said.

“From there I progressed into publishing. I worked at a famous publisher in London called B.T. Batsford.”

Mr Sellick said during his time at B.T. Batsford he realised that many Canadian and American authors and publishers were in need of quality editorial research, so he began to work freelance.

Eventually he took a job in New York with MD Medical News magazine.

“A rich little magazine it was,” he said.

“I supplied culture to American physicians. If they did a biography of Mozart of instance, and if Mozart had an ingrown toenail that fact would have been mentioned because all the readers were physicians.”

After eight years in New York, Mr Sellick moved back to Australia, gaining employment in the history department, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University in Canberra.

“My great claim to fame is that being a research school, all the research fellows had degrees, and I was the first person to be employed by the ANU who didn’t have a degree,” he said.

After leaving the ANU, Mr Sellick spent a “marvellous” five years as chief librarian for Fairfax in Sydney before finally moving back to Albany in 1989 to look after his aged father.

“After he died, I thought I might go back to either Sydney or Canberra to work, but I decided Albany was so nice. I’d forgotten what a magic place it was,” he said.

“When I came back here to live, I started to put all those ideas and stuff that I’d collected into books of my own, of which there are now about seven.”

After establishing the Military Heritage Museum at the Princess Royal Fortress, Mr Sellick began work on a book called First Impressions of Albany: Travellers’ Tales 1791-1901, which was published in 1995 by the WA Museum.

“It was a great success, it has been reprinted four times,” he said. “From there I started doing other anthologies – all historical – on Antarctica, survivors in the Indian Ocean and pirates. Mainly nautical subjects.”

Mr Sellick is currently working on a book tentatively called Encounters in the Indian Ocean.

“It’s all very rare personal accounts of survival in the Indian Ocean,” he said. Mr Sellick recounted the tale of a Norwegian soldier whose ship was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine in World War II.

“All the survivors were in lifeboats, the submarine came alongside and the Japanese started machine-gunning people,” he said.

“This particular Norwegian sailor jumped over the side of the lifeboat and, to escape, he dived underneath the lifeboat and underneath the submarine and came up the other side where he was quite safe, because all the Japanese with the machine guns had their backs to him.

“So he survived and he swam to an empty lifeboat some distance away and there were about eight dead seamen in it.

“He managed to climb into the boat and the only living thing in the boat was the ship’s dog.

“He and the dog survived.”

Mr Sellick said he was about halfway through the book.

“A few things are connected with Albany.

"Some of the rescue people came into Albany because it was a major port and all the rest of it,” he said.

“I like to bring in little bits and pieces of Albany from time to time. We are important after all, aren’t we?”

Got a story? Email Keir.tunbridge@albanyadvertiser.com