CANNON, Michael Montague (1929-2022) 
Students, 1945. M Cannon far left
Michael Cannon, historian and author, in 1966, published his pivotal work,
The Land Boomers which heralded a popular output of books on Australian history.
In 1969, he edited
The Vagabond Papers for Melbourne University Press and in 1970 was awarded a Commonwealth Literary Fellowship. From 1971 to 1998, he prolifically published a steady stream of books including
Who’s master? Who’s man?; Land, boom and bust; Life in the Country; Life in the Cities; That damned democrat; Old Melbourne Town; Hold Page One; The Woman as Murderer; The Human Face of the Great Depression; and That
disreputable Firm : the inside story of Slater and Gordon. For ten years during this period until 1991, he remained the respected foundation editor of
Historical Records of Victoria (1836-1839). His extensive personal papers are held by the National Archives.
Michael Cannon was born in Brisbane on 17 August 1929, the son of parents Arthur C Cannon and Dorothy. The family moved to Cobden in Western Victoria where Michael first attended Cobden State School. Later, he attended Camperdown Higher Elementary School before entering Geelong College as a boarder in 1944. In 1945, he joined the College House of Guilds Council.
After completing Form VI in 1945, he worked for the next three years as a journalist, at times for the
Argus and
Herald newspapers, as well as freelancing in Sydney. From Sydney he gravitated to London in 1949 to work as a correspondent for the
Sydney Morning Herald before returning to Australia to take up a position as a senior reporter for
The Age. After a brief period from 1953 to 1954 running his own printing business he returned to mainstream publishing as editor of
Family Circle magazine. In the next four years he ventured, as an owner, into publishing, establishing the ill fated monthly journal
Newsday in 1959 and the more successful
Australian Fashion News in 1962, which became part of the Murdoch Group. In 1969, after working for three years as Assistant Director of Melbourne University Press, Michael was appointed founding editor of the
Sunday Observer and
Sunday Review (later
Nation Review).
Michael retired from active writing and publishing in 1999, and took up reafforestation on a disused dairy farm in South Gippsland. His memoir of that experience, entitled
Living in the Clouds, may be found in public libraries. He retired to Inverloch in 2009.
Michael passed away 24 February 2022, aged 92 years.
Obituary courtesy S. Cannon February 2022:
Asked about the unusual badge in his lapel, Michael Cannon used to joke that it was presented to him by the Australia Council as an Emeritus Award for wasting his life writing and publishing more than 30 historical books, instead of doing something useful with his life.
Cannon, who died on 24 February 2022 aged 92 years old, was only half joking. All his life he was conscious of uncommon good fortune in being able to devote his best years to the writing of popular history.
With little formal education and no academic qualifications, Cannon said he felt that history ‘should be mostly about people – not politics or sociology.’
Born in Brisbane in 1929 and raised in a Victorian country newspaper office, he managed to impress historians of all persuasions with the depth and breadth of his research into Australian history. In 1966 his first bestseller The Land Boomers exposed well-known individuals and families who led the speculative book of the 1880s. Some even profited from the savage depression which followed.
And his 1995 book Perilous Voyages to the New Land dealt not only with immigration theory but with the extraordinary experiences of individuals who dared to leave their homelands in search of better lives in Australia.
Michael Montague Cannon came from a prominent newspaper family. His great-grandmother Jessie Grover was one of Australia’s first women journalists during the 1880s. His grandfather Montague (‘Monty’) Grover introduced modern pictorial techniques as editor of successful Sun newspapers in Melbourne and Sydney. His mother Dorothy Cannon remained a working journalist from the 1920s to the 1990s.
Michael was educated at Cobden High School, Camperdown High and Geelong College. At the end of World War II he began working as a copyboy on the Melbourne Argus, then as a cadet journalist on the Herald.
In 1948 he sailed to England to work on the London staff of the Sydney Morning Herald. After studying the operations of the fledgling BBC television service, he wrote a book-length series for the Radio Times on the glowing future of television.
After his return to Melbourne Cannon worked as a senior reporter on The Age. In later decades he wrote many articles and book reviews for the paper.
Cannon turned to the publication of monthly magazines, and in 1955 became founding editor of the Australian edition of Family Circle, based on the popular American original.
Early in 1959 he sold his magazine interests and spent the proceeds on a news magazine called Newsday (not to be confused with The Age’s later evening newspaper). His first wife Susan tragically died towards the end of that year, and Newsday ceased publication.
In 1960 Cannon was appointed associate editor of the Sydney Sunday Mirror, assisting his close friend Cyril Pearl in an attempt to change the brash tabloid into a ‘quality newspaper’. The result was severe loss of circulation, and after a dispute with its proprietor, Cannon returned to Melbourne.
During the 1960s he began a new career, researching his first book as well as working as a bookshop manager and associate director of Melbourne University Press under Peter Ryan. One of several people writing as ‘The Melbourne Spy’ he contributed frequently to the Sydney journal Nation.
In 1969 the Sydney political activist Gordan Barton attempted to break into the media world by backing Melbourne’s first professional Sunday newspaper the Sunday Observer. Cannon was appointed founding editor, and also founded the Sunday Review, precursor of Nation Review.
Both papers last for some years, but when the radical push of the anti-Vietnam crusades died away, and Barton’s funds were exhausted, each publication changed ownership or ceased publication.
Cannon had previously returned to historical writing, producing a flood of popular original works and facsimile books. All told he wrote 20 books under his own name, and edited another 15.
His most successful book in terms of sales was The Exploration of Australia (1987; 70,000 copies in three hardback editions). The Land Boomers has sold more than 40,000 copies in various editions, and is still in print. A Bicentennial work, Australia, Spirit of a Nation, went through three hardback editions totalling more than 30,000 copies.
Cannon’s 300,000-word survey of Australia in the Victorian Age was issued in several versions. Professor Manning Clark wrote that this massive work consolidated Cannon’s reputation ‘as one of the liveliest and most illuminating writers of history in Australia.’ The volumes won the first Barbara Ramsden Award for writing, and for the editing by Sue Ebury.
In 1978 Cannon was commissioned by the Public Record Office of Victoria to begin research into Victoria’s early years of European settlement. This culminated in publication of the unique nine-volume Historical Records of Victoria between 1981 and 2002.
In recognition of his years of writing and publication, Cannon was presented with the Australia Council’s Emeritus award by Prime Minister Paul Keating in 1996.
Two years later Cannon completed his last major work, the ‘inside story’ of law firm Slater and Gordon. He then bought a farm near Foster in South Gippsland, where he spent ten years planting thousands of trees and restoring the environment to its original bushland, before retiring to Inverloch at age 80.
Cannon’s personal papers are held in the National Library, Canberra, and his research papers at the Royal Historical Association of Victoria.
He is survived by four children – Paul, Sarah, James and Patrick – numerous grandchildren; and a sister Dina Monks, who was editor of the Frankston Standard. His brother-in-law John Monks, also a noted journalist, died in 2014.
Sources: Correspondence, Michael Cannon 21 Jan 2014, S. Cannon 2022.