Zed
The first sentence of this very useful collection says “The quest for white dominion in Australia has been pursued from the outset in intellectual as well as material terms” If this collection is indicative of the “intellectual” literary output of colonial Australia of the 19th century, that sentence sure makes a good point. I have no memory of mention of anything of the indigenous people in any of the stories or poems presented. The reader was forewarned.
Set up into 5 parts that cover various aspects of colonial writing the editor has covered Part 1, The Challenge of a New Landscape, Part 2, The Burden of The Past, part 3, Renegotiating Sexual Roles, Part 4, The Quest for Fulfilment and my favourite, the final part Existential Anxieties.
Of the authors represented throughout, the more well known to modern readers would be Marcus Clarke, Henry Lawson, A B “Banjo” Paterson and Miles Franklin, all still in print today. Women are well represented, with Ada Cambridge and Barbara Baynton being my favourites.
A short biography of each author and poet is presented, plus textual sources.
All in all, a good compilation for anyone that has an interest in early colonial writings from Australia.
“4000 Bowls of Rice” is a loose telling of Allied prisoners of the Japanese who built the Burma Railway with Cecil Dickson, a member of the Australian 2/2 Pioneer Battalion, the central character. While on the troop carrier Orcades, controversially ordered to land in Java in February 1942 by the British when the Australian government had requested that they return to mainland Australia in support of defence against a possible Japanese invasion, Cec, along with about 3000 other troops, was captured after the capitulation of the Dutch on Java. There was not much of a fight put up, with the Australian troops resenting the lack of resistance by the Dutch.
The writing of this book was inspired by a conversation over dinner on Shelter Island in New York by the author with Cec in 1979 after he had made the comment that he had spent over three years in POW camps in Java, Burma, and Thailand, and that had led to him still enjoying rice even though he had “.....once had 3800 consecutive meals of rice......” Odd choice of title considering that 4000 is never mentioned anywhere in the text. I presume the publishers thought that 3800 lacked a certain ring to it.
This is a short read, with the main text and introduction being 177 pages. There is a Forward by Colonel J.M Williams, the commanding office of the Australian 2/2 Pioneer Battalion, along with a roster of all 212 Pioneers Battalion Member who were ordered to surrender. The end notes section is very good, and the bibliography section had this reviewer adding to his wish list pile. A highlight is that the text is interspersed with some never before published photos of the POW taken during their time in the camp.
With that, it feels churlish to say that I thought this labour of love by the author was lacking in focus and dull in delivery. The subtitle is “A Prisoner of War Comes Home” but that part of the telling is really rather pedestrian as not much happened. When surrender came the POW were on the Burma Thailand railway itself, the US prisoners were flown out immediately but the Australian, British and Dutch had to wait around for their respective governments to arrange transport. Cec wrote his wife letters that are published here in full, but they really said little of any great insight. As hard as the author tried by interspersing the narrative with tales of the hardship of being a POW along with some history of POW's in Asia, it leads to an unsatisfying read.
Australian author Tim Bowden writes on the back cover blurb that this is “.....a useful addition to the growing body of literature on the allied experience in Asia” and is recommended as such.
A good book, Dorrigo Evans thought, leaves you wanting to reread the book. A great book compels you to reread your own soul.
I have no idea if this book forced me to reread my soul, but it forced me to take stock several times, often, take a deep breath and wonder why and how I had been emotionally smashed. This remarkable novel contains some of the most profound passages I have ever read about how mankind deals with love and death; add to that, the stealing of generations of their youth and identity, a comment on the Stolen Generations, an Australian travesty.
The plot is a blend of stories that author Richard Flanagan's father had told him of his time as an Australian prisoner of war on the Burma–Thailand Railway in WW2, along with a few other tales that Flanagan had heard over the years, his reading of the classics such as Ulysses and his admiration of haiku poetry.
My need to reread this magnificent book is compelling.
Several days after finishing it, I still think about it.
Days and months are travellers of eternity. So too the years that pass by.
https://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2014/10/17/4109128.htm
A physical guide? Very old school, said someone to me when I whipped it out to consult while on vacation in Singapore. Which begs the question are they still useful in this day and age of easy access to all things on this planet via the internet via the device of our choice that we carry around and peer at constantly. In these travellers' case, the answer is an emphatic yes. I decided that my wife and I were not going to get international roaming on our phones and were going to do our best to explore with the assistance of this guide and see what happens.
Prior to leaving, I used the guide to set a loose itinerary with 2 days set aside for the Singapore Sevens, a sports event we were attending. Included in the guide was a pull-out map that only covered the central area of Singapore as well as an index to major roads, a transport system map, a top sights guide and a very small map of the entire island. I ultimately left this behind each day and used a far better map found at Changi Airport when we arrived. Based on the loose itinerary, the guide turned out to be more than useful in the end. Its descriptions of the various neighbourhoods to visit were very good and of the small to longer walks suggested for each we used 2 and found them fantastic. Our hotel was right next to Kampong Glam so this lead to easy access from there to Little India and at least 3 walks that the guide suggested.
Lonely Planet also wrote of a couple of places we may not have found but were glad to have, The Battle Box at Fort Canning Park and the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple in China Town for example. Of the top sites recommended by Lonely Planet we made 7 of the 10 with the National Art Gallery, in my opinion an absolute must for those that like art. I would also suggest that the Botanic Gardens are also a must, a gorgeous place that deserves its world Heritage listing. The least impressive for me was Sentosa Island but that is not my style of place to visit, though I get why it would be included.
Near the back there are 20 pages that cover such things as Singapore Today with a bit of history, a short discussion on its people and cultures, architecture and the many languages spoken that was very useful. This is followed by The Survival Guide, also very useful as it covers everything from public transport to small district maps. The transport system is easily one of the best and cheapest we have ever used anywhere. Our home town of Brisbane has to have a serious look at Singapore considering it is holding an Olympics in the not so distant future, and as to how its public transport will cope with that huge event I have no idea.
If going to Singapore, I would suggest a minimum of 4 full days, there is a lot to pack in. And I would pack this guide in your luggage if you wish to get that pesky phone out of your hands and face. And beware the humidity, phew!
“My mother stood there in the crowd, and I supposed she waved. She looked distraught. I never saw her again.”
Thus, Eric Lomax went to war as a signalman, was eventually taken prisoner, tortured at the hands of his Japanese captors and came home to marry as he was told to get on with his life. He went on to have a fine career including postings to Ghana with the civil service and had children to his wife. But....all was not well.
In this very well written autobiography Eric told of many things such as his early life, his relationship with his parents, his army life and even went into some detail as to his brutal torture. Along with other POW officers a radio was found in their hut and with that began his appalling ordeal. Vast amounts of his suffering he recalled in great detail. It leads to an understandable hatred of the Japanese with specific reference to one individual, Nagase, the interpreter during his interrogation and torture. He eventually met Nagase and there was redemption for both men. It is a well told story and well worth the time to read. There was even a documentary of the meeting made and a film of Eric's life.
But on finishing this book I was struck by how little Eric discussed his first family, his wife and 3 children, they seemed to be little to no part of the story. Eric bottled up his horrendous experiences from his first wife to the point I suspect it was a difficult life for her. I did some research and found this item.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/dec/28/railway-mans-forgotten-family
“My dad's feelings were locked inside himself. He was there physically, but emotionally he was 100% absent,” his daughter Charmaine is quoted as saying in that item.
During this read, for what Eric opened up on, and that was plenty; I always felt that it took a lot of courage for him to be involved in this book and the events that happened in it later. Sadly, his first family suffered as well.
Highly recommended to anyone with an interest in the subject of POW and the victims of torture.
The trials and tribulations of multicultural life come to the fore in this book of seemingly semi-autobiographical, six interrelated short stories.
The last story Waiting was a standout for me, as it was easily relatable to my parent's passing.
I read GR friend Nat K's review of this book a while back and have reread it just after finishing this book. Nat has covered my thoughts in his excellent summation, and I recommend both the book and Nat's review.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4142728679
Written by embedded journalist Sebastian Junger, I have found this a profoundly interesting insight into the actions and more importantly in my opinion the reactions of men in second platoon of Battle Company while in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan. Vaguely thematic through each of the books (chapters) I found myself absorbed in trying to understand how soldiers under the pressure of war in the most dangerous part of Afghanistan dealt with not only, as the book headings suggest, fear, killing and what Junger called love, the bonding they had with their fellow platoon members.
Highly recommended.
Book One. Fear.
New York City Six. Months later.
I came to think of O'Byrne as a stand-in for the entire platoon, a way to understand a group of men who I don't think entirely understood themselves.
Korengal Valley, Afghanistan, Spring 2007.
There was only one rock to hide behind, and Vendenberge was using it, so O'Byrne got behind him. ‘Fuck, I can't believe they just shot at me' he yelled. Vendenberge was a huge blond man who spoke slowly and was very, very smart. ‘Well' he said ‘I don't know if they were shooting at you......' ‘Okay' O'Byrne said ‘shooting at us.....'
I can see incoming rounds sparking off the top of the wall. I keep trying to stand up and shoot video, but psychologically it's almost impossible; my head feels vulnerable as an eggshell. All I want to do is protect it.
“I guarantee you, half of First Platoon is going to be divorced by the time this is over,” Kearney told me early on in the tour. The cook started talking to a finger puppet as a way of coping, but that unnerved the other men so much that one of them finally destroyed it.
One species of bird sounds exactly like incoming rocket propelled grenades; the men call them “RPG birds” and can't keep themselves from flinching whenever they hear them.
As a civilian among solders I was aware that a failure of nerve by me could put other men at risk, and that idea was almost as mortifying as the very real dangers up there. The problem with fear, though, is that it isn't any one thing. Fear has a whole taxonomy – anxiety, panic, foreboding - and you could be braced for one form and completely fall apart facing another.
The men sleep as much as they can, every chance they get, far beyond the needs of the human body. “If you sleep twelve hours a day it's only a seven month deployment” one soldier explained.
Book Two. Killing.
Five people are dead in Yaka Chine, along with ten wounded, and the elders declare jihad against every American in the valley.
“I worry about the rest of the guys” Raeon says. “Some of them are takin' it real bad, kind of blamin' themselves because we couldn't push over the top. But the thing they got to understand is that he was dead instantly – there's just nothin' we could do to get there”
Raeon lights his cigarette and exhales.
“I go on leave in two weeks” he says, “it's not how I wanted to go though”
Brennan doesn't survive surgery. Medoza is dead before he even leaves the ridge. Five more men are wounded. Then there's Rougle from the day before, as well as Rice and Vandenberge. It's been a costly week that makes the people back home think that maybe we're losing the war.
“And Mendoza's a fuckin hero, right?” he said. “He's an American Hero, right?” “Yeah, he's a hero” “And Brennan was dead. Right?” O'Byrne said. “I mean they weren't dragging him out alive, were they?” I wasn't sure what to say. Soldiers can seem pretty accepting of the idea that they might die in combat, but being taken alive is a different matter. “No, he didn't die until later,” I said. “He was alive at the time.”
I concentrate on running the camera. That is the easiest way to avoid thinking about the fact that what you're filming could kill you. “All right, you stay in there” Captain Thyng tells the gunner. “We're going to pull up around the corner —-“
And that as far as it gets.
They have a huge shoulder fired rocket called a Javelin, for example, that can be steered into the window of a speeding car half a mile away. Each Javelin round costs $80,000, and the idea that it's fired by a guy who doesn't make that in a year at a guy who doesn't make that in a lifetime is somehow so outrageous it almost makes the war seem winnable.
“It's like crack” he yelled, “you can't get a better high.” I asked him how he was ever going to go back to civilian life. “He shook his head. “I have no idea”
A few minutes later it happens again. No one knows what it is but later I find out they were sniper rounds fired from way down-valley – off-target but still boring fiercely through the darkness bearing their tiny load of death.
Book Three. Love
A new private nicknamed Spanky overreached a bit and tattooed his left arm with a face that was half angel, half devil. When sergeant Mac saw it he demanded to know what the fuck in meant. “It represents the angels and the devils I have to wake up to every morning, sar'n.” Spanky said. After the laughter died down Mac told him he was better off saying he got really fucked up one night and doesn't remember getting it. “Now repeat that a few times so it sounds believable” he said.
It's a foolish and embarrassing thought but worth owning up to. Perfectly sane, good men have been drawn back to combat over and over again, and anyone interested in the idea of world peace would do well to know what they're looking for. Not killing, necessarily — that couldn't have been clearer in my mind — but the other side of the equation: protecting. The defence of the tribe is an insanely compelling idea, and once you've been exposed to it, there's almost nothing else you'd rather do.
He had thick limbs and crazy farmhand strength and when he teamed up with Jones — which was most of the time — you'd need half a squad to defend yourself. Ultimately, it made me think that if you deprive men of the company of women for too long, and then turn off the steady adrenaline drip of heavy combat, it may not turn sexual, but it's certainly going to turn weird.
I once asked Cortez whether he would risk his life for other men in the platoon. “I'd actually throw myself on the hand grenade for them,” he said. I asked him why. “Because I actually love my brothers,” he said. “I mean, it's a brotherhood. Being able to save their life so they can live, I think is rewarding. Any of them would do it for me.”
The men are looking down and avoiding each other's gazes. Many are smoking cigarettes and others look close to tears. Kearney repeats the information he has — nine dead, nine wounded — and then tells them that one of the dead is Abad. “I guarantee you that if he hadn't been doing his job when he died, there'd probably be more soldiers out there dead right now,” Kearney says. “So take honor in the fact that you guys trained up one hell of a fucking soldier.”
Battle will not go out of the valley with one last monster firefight. Most of the men seem relieved. A few are clearly disappointed. Someone who was probably going to get shot will now be going home alive and whole.
Vicenza, Italy. Three Months Later.
We get up to go and O'Byrne turns to me as we walk out the door. “See?” he says. “See why I hate the Army?” The Army that saved O'Byrne from himself is now destroying the very man it created — or at least that's how it seems to O'Byrne.
My archaeological reading in the past has been purely British and for that I can thank my dad who left me a library of his books on the subject. That was later boosted with regular watching's of Time Team, a popular show here in Australia back in the day. I also eventually devoured the works of Francis Prior after a visit to Flag Fen when making a visit to the UK many years back.
No complaints, but this book has made me realise that I have missed reading about what has happened in Australia and how as a nation archaeology has had a huge impact in terms of both the cultural and political understanding of both the past and the present.
The only negatives I have taken from Billy Griffiths very good history are two. The Epilogue was written for the release in 2018, a mere nanosecond in the scheme of things when it concerns the passing of archaeological time, but a lifetime in changes to the thoughts on the culture and history of a nation. With such deep research and reading of many texts on the subject, as shown in the superb end notes, that a bibliography would have been extremely useful to the likes of me that would be more than willing to read further on this enthralling subject.
But let's put those minor gripes aside because this has been a fascinating read for me personally, and I would add that I would fail to understand how it could not be for anyone with a modicum of interest in understanding the history of Australia's deep past via archaeological research.
It could be said that there has been a slow change in national consciousness concerning Australian History. The convict past of white Australia was very much put to the back of that consciousness due to a national embarrassment that British colonisation of the continent was via the transport of the so-called dregs of that nation, with this criminal class being the backbone of so-called modern development. As to what came before, there was seemingly a rejection that the original inhabitants could have had any kind of history at all. Vere Gordon Childe wrote in 1957 ‘I'm sure it's something worth studying and preserving.....particularly the “Aboriginal” Rock pictures' but there were but 3 or 4 people working in the field with next to no training nor adequate resources back then.
Things changed slowly from the coming of John Mulvaney who had been in Britain in WW2 and had immersed himself in ancient cathedrals and castles. On return, he took an interest in archaeology and his contributions to small diggings back in the mid 1950's have led to larger archaeological works and the resources required that at present are striving to give an understanding of this ancient land's Deep Time and, as the title says, it's dreaming via the first nations' knowledge of antiquity.
One event that took my particular attention was Chapter Eight, “You Have Entered Aboriginal Land”.
I have youthful memories of the controversy that was the attempt by the Tasmanian state government to dam the Gordon below Franklin River in the early 1980s. It has been said that that controversy was part of the reason why the then Federal Government lost the election in 1983. In a high court decision of great significance, the archaeological work that had been done at both Kutikina Cave and Deena Reena Cave were deemed to show that to inundate these would have been in breach of Australia's obligations under the World Heritage Properties Conservation Act. One judge stated that ‘Parliament was entitled to act.....to preserve the material evidence of the history and culture of the Tasmanian Aboriginals.' After a Tasmanian Hydro-Electric official stated he saw no good reason to keep the caves, ‘What good does it do to anyone?' he said. John Mulvaney was aghast that after 3 decades of working in the field there was still a lack of understanding as to what archaeology could achieve in the way of cross-cultural understanding, cultural pride, and local, national and global narratives. Indeed.
A very easy to read book that has been well researched, and I can but do no more than highly recommend to anyone with an interest in Archaeology.
I thought this a fascinating history and analysis considering that I had yet to read a comprehensive history of transportation to Australia. Fairly long with the text of my copy being 603 pages then add a further 80 pages that covered Appendices, Abbreviations, Notes, a Bibliography and the index. The end notes were very good, and the bibliography is an excellent source for anyone interested in the subject.
The title comes from the Moreton Bay song.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moreton_Bay_(song)
“I am a native of Erin's island but banished now to the fatal shore,”
To quote author Robert Hughes “.....the truly durable legacy of the convict system was not ‘criminality' but the revulsion from it: the will to be as decent as possible, to sublimate and wipe out the convict stain, even at a cost – heavily paid for in later education – of historical amnesia.”
In reality the vast majority of the 160,000 transportees did their time and were emancipated with few going back to mother England as life was far superior in the new world of Australia. The “stain” was really the inhumane treatment that was meted out to a few reoffenders and later those transported to Van Diemen's Land and Norfolk Island that was a form of sadism such was the treatment of those convicts.
In terms of crime most were petty offences committed in England; it was those that reoffended that were mostly transported who were usually poverty-stricken such were the times. There were exceptions, forgers for example, and the Irish transportees were mostly sent for political reasons. Crime has always been a subject that politicians will use to shore up support and Hughes exposed that hypocrisy often both in England and in the colonies. For example, as the debate that was heading towards abolition was hotting up there were those in the ruling class of New South Wales that had claimed that the mass transportation was the cause of massive criminality in the descendants of the transportees. In New South Wales itself, such was the separation of classes, there was a disgust towards those that had been emancipated, but once it looked that there was not going to be free labour with abolition they changed their mind as to that with reports of criminality being a “monstrous caricature” by Whig politicians.
Hughes wrote this book back in the 1980s and I think I have personally seen a slight change in attitude towards our convict past. From what I can ascertain it is better taught in schools, though my generation still seems to think “we just turned up”. Hughes' asks would Australians have done anything different if it had not begun as a jail. He surmises that we would not have had a collective amnesia to that past for as long as we had. We preferred (and in some cases still do) Mother County history, for example. There are still residues of that attitude to this day, think of the lack of support for a republic through to the more buffoonery examples of a recent Australian Prime Minister knighting a British prince. And for all that comment I am as guilty, having had in the past a preference for foreign history over just about all things Australian. It took a visit to Norfolk Island to really open my eyes to our past and not just read interesting snippets or immerse myself in our WW2 history.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2809884622
I read a review from a good reads friend who stated that “.......Robert Hughes writing is, well, florid. He writes well but he is just too adjectival for my tastes.” And I have to agree with that. I spent a lot of times looking up archaic words and event's that were interesting to me as such, but is not normally my style of history telling. This is also very much an opinionated telling, and I do prefer to make my own mind up and not be lead. Be that as it may, I think this is a must-read for anyone interested in the subject and does modern Australians a great service in explaining a past that some just are not interested in due to the so-called “stain” of criminality or even the perception that it is “boring”. It is not boring and is in fact a very interesting colonial history and with that I recommend this book highly.
It had hard not be impressed that these ten rogues with their stealing a bunch of Huon pine (the ship that never was) were able to sail this wood from Van Diemen's Land to Chile on what was an approximate journey of about 10,800 kilometres in some of the wildest seas that are imaginable.
It is also hard not be impressed that author Peter Grose has able to fill a 220-page book with as much information about this based on such limited information available, with “fill” being the operative word. Much of what he has filled the book with concerning convict history in Tasmania, Norfolk Island and Sarah Island this reviewer has read in much more depth. With a very bright and attractive cover and a breezy easy to read style, this would nonetheless be a very good read for the casual reader who has made a visit to Sarah Island and has a passing interest in this “......unlikely story”, to quote the subtitle.
The vast majority of the information available to us today is from the unreliable writings of convict Jimmy Porter. He gave two contradictory accounts of his actions, one written in Hobart in 1837 and the other at Norfolk Island in 1842. His versions of events were media sensations of their times. He and four other of his roguish colleague's trial for piracy in 1837 were to become a legal sensation as well. What was a hanging offence became, after much discussion and debate in legal and media circles, just another sentence of transportation for life. Why? How can they be guilty of piracy when that is a crime of the high seas and the bunch of Huon pine was nothing but that! It may have looked like a brig, but show us the papers that it is one your honour. It is the King's own wood that has been stolen and from a harbour, not the high seas! This was a defence well-made by the defendants. The judge thought they had a point too, so let's just send them to Norfolk Island, far better than cause célèbre hangings.
The main protagonist Jimmy Porter led a life. From the records attainable, he came from a well-to-do family but was always in trouble for minor misdemeanours. He went to sea as a young lad and ended up in Valparaiso in Chile and married locally and had children. Still young, the lure of the sea called, and off he went. He ended up back in England, but minor misdemeanours got one a sentence of transportation back then, and he ended up being transported to Australia. With his various brushes with the colonial authorities over time, he ended up on the infamous Sarah Island. From there he and nine others stole the wood that was shaped like a brig that was eventually to be called the Frederick once commissioned and with that sailed it away. They landed in Valdivia in Chile and six of the rogues disappeared to never be heard of again, Jimmy and three others idiotically stayed put and were given up by the local governor to a passing British military vessel. Back to Australia for Jimmy, once he was sentenced for absconding. After his famous voyage and incarceration on Norfolk Island, he ended up in Newcastle and all trace of him vanishes.
Author Peter Grose has surmised a lot of Jimmy's life based on what he could research of his criminal records and the two contradictory writings he left. The information as to the trial is readily available in the historical records. The Fredrick's voyage is known on Chile with a story called Los evadidos de Tasmania along with a “brief account” called James Porter, el bandido enamorado by Fernando Lizama-Murphy. Porters procurement of the Frederick was used by Marcus Clarke in his superb convict novel For the Term of His Natural Event as an inspiration for the character John Rex. Porter is also the reason for the longest running play in Australia, The Ship That Never Was, held nightly at Strahan the village in Macquarie Harbour where Sarah Island is situated. I must get there on my next visit to Tasmania.
This is not my style of delivery generally. I prefer my history delivered a bit more academic, but it would be churlish of me to be too critical. It is a fine yarn told for the curious and those that may be less enamoured by history, and recommended accordingly.
Considering that this was first released in 1987 conceptually it has stood the test of time. Plot wise there are a couple of character limitation's, but I have not let that stand in the way of a very thematic book.
Author George Turner came to my attention because he won the Miles Franklin award in 1966 for his novel The Cupboard Under the Stairs. I have been after a copy of that book for many a long year and have seen it for sale at some exorbitant prices that I am not willing to pay, but it has recently become available by a small publisher and will get a copy as soon as I can. Turner, based on this novel The Summer and the Sea is a very gifted writer and story teller and I am keen to read further. The quality of this story was recognised on release by eventually winning the Arthur C Clark Award in 1988.
This is first and foremost an Australian novel and with that one based in Melbourne and its suburbs, nowhere else. It cannot be misconstrued as elsewhere for several reasons. Newport a veritable working class suburb for starters plays a large role in terms of place. Others such as Balwyn and Richmond to name but a couple have roles to play with the city centre, St Kilda Road, its “derelict concert hall” (Hamner Hall) and the Princess Theatre featuring at times. Further afield there are the Dandenong's and Baw Baw mentioned. A kookaburra laughs at one point and Kangaroos are extinct due to the pressure of feeding an expanding population.
The language of the underclass (Swill and Fringe) is heavy strine, and becomes a distinct dialect that emerged in just a generation to the point that it has become indistinguishable to those that work for or are the ruling and upper classes (Sweet) and make no contact with the underclass. It could be said that the Sweet represents the ruling/moneyed/technocrat class, the Fringe loosely the old middle class and the vast majority, the Swill the old working lower socio economic class. I was reminded of the old Australian 6 o'clock swill term. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_o%27clock_swill
There is a nod to the literature of Australia past with reference to The Lucky Country. This is a book by Donald Horne and the term itself can at times be used as an insult or with irony as it does in this book. Slang is evident such as “Chewy” for chewing gum. This term was used when I was at school and may well be used today by school kids. I am also reminded of the term “Chewy on your boot”. To quote an internet search “A derogatory phrase called out at AFL (Australian Rules Football) matches (the imputation being that the caller hopes that the footballer has chewing gum stuck on his boot, so that he can't kick the ball properly) “. Any reader of this book can search the many references made and will be lead to Australiana.
The story is in 2 parts. The Autumn People and The Sea and The Summer. The Autumn People are in the very distant future in what seems to be a utopia. An archaeologist, Lena, takes an actor, Andra, via a form of hovercraft from what is called The New City (in the present Dandenong Ranges and being now above the flooded lowlands) to a Swill tower, Tower Twenty Three, which is visible above the water line. The actor wished to research for a play he wants to write and perform in. When discussing with Lena his plans for the play she gives him her unpublished manuscript of a novel she has written about the life of Billy Kovacs, Tower Twenty Three boss, which he reads. This is the vast majority of this novel and is about the Greenhouse Culture of the times from 2041 through 2061, thus a novel within a novel. To say much about the plot would give too much away.
George Turner has been a smart enough writer to make this as enduring read, even nearly 40 years after release. In the future will there be greenhouse induced floods that make large tracts unlivable, worldwide economic collapse, over population, mass starvation as just some of the events as told in the novel within the novel? Who knows, but be that as it may the dates can easily be changed and the book will still be a dystopian nightmare no matter when it is read into the future. The Sea and the Summer is only a novel in manuscript form, after all. There is a sense of the characters having few redeeming features for long periods of the novel within the novel. The collapse of society along with the ever present drowning of the living space brings out the fear of ‘others' be that for power/economic reasons or be that due to class and/or race differences. The degrading of Swill people and their very surrounds is all-pervading.
The US edition of this book was published with the title The Drowning Towers for some unknown reason. IMO the deep thinker about what this book offers will prefer The Sea and the Summer, a far superior title.
“This is Elwood and there was a beach here once. I used to paddle here. Then the water came up and there were the storm years and the pollution, and the water became too filthy'. ‘It must be terrible over there in Newport when the river floods', she continues: ‘A high tide covers the ground levels of the tenements'”
“Mum is dead . . . Once, she said very forcefully, ‘I've had a good life, Francis. So full.' Full, I thought, of what would have been avoided in a saner world. Billy came in later, but by then she was rambling about the past, about summertime and the glistening sea.”
Science Fiction at its best, recommended to those that look to sleep well.
This is my second Anita Brookner novel and in fairly short time I might add. After thoroughly enjoying Incidents in the Rue Laugier I was interested in seeing if I was as enamoured with this one. I am pleased to say the answer is yes. I can also repeat what I said previously, “....minimal dialogue, long passages that were deep descriptions of individuals and of place.......lacking a particularly strong plot.” But again it works. Brookner is an extraordinary writer, so skilled and adept at her craft that plot hardly needs to be complex. Those that enjoy their literature in this style will not be disappointed.
Thematically, this is a tale of loneliness and commitment to a specific way of life when circumstances force our hand. Only child Zoe tells her story as a first-person narrative of growing up with her widowed and solitary mother Anne. Anne eventually marries a much older and wealthy man, who Zoe likes very much. Unfortunately he passes on and Zoe's world then consists of looking after her mother who declines rapidly. How Zoe deals with all this is superbly told with a deftness that had me the reader thinking that there was a certain permanent pensiveness in Zoe, a pensiveness that pervaded her life from beginning through to her seemingly final destiny of meeting an older man who was not far removed from life's loneliness himself. All told in a so middle class bourgeois and very English way.
Highly recommended for the exemplary writing alone.
This is a bit of a dilemma. The truth is that this novel has far too many faults, but to be honest? I could not put it down.
We get a Dorian Grey style motif that is so ham fisted and at 430 pages far too long. I suspect that if this was a first draft manuscript from an unknown, a publisher would have either rejected it or at least said “yes great idea but let's get the editor to work on it.” When you are Irvine Welsh whose previous 5 novels are bestsellers, would the publisher be game to say anything? I don't know as I am not in the industry, others can tell me.
Typical of an Irvine novel, it is phenomenally sweary. The Scots at a working class level do swear a lot and to put it into print like this does not worry me so much, but at times it kind of seemed never ending. On the other hand, so what! Danny Skinner, the main protagonist, would say and did say as much in one scene. He was in San Francisco and was pulled up for using the C word and was mildly amused that they were all aghast at his language but seemingly had no issue with the ease of purchase of weaponry and the daily death that went with it.
Good-looking, literate, suave when he wanted to be, king of the kids Danny actually somehow puts a hex on a lad he takes an instant dislike for, computer game nerd and goofy Brian Kibby, and Danny can do what he likes with fighting, eating and drinking to excess and Brian suffers all the consequences to a body that is not made for the damage it receives via the hex. At one point Danny is raped at a drug fuelled orgy by another male and Brian suffers from a druggred and drunken hangover of giant proportions and also a bleeding bum. Brian's life was permanent pain, breakdown and hangover, such was Danny's debauched excess. That is until Danny realises he might be killing the goose that laid the golden egg as to his most enjoyable life of hedonism and that changes were needed.
But I just laughed out loud too often at some of the comedy, if that was what it was meant to be. There was a murder death scene that involved necrophilia that I found really amusing. Some of the characters are caricatures to the point of being so black and satirical that I enjoyed them for their sordid ways. There is a sex scene of grotesqueness that had me laughing and squirming all at the same time, but such was its pointlessness and uselessness to the entire plot I have no idea why it was even being in the tale told. Arrrggh the horror!
This is not that good a book; it is too long, at times haphazard as there were pointless events that could have been culled and some of the plot a bit obvious but........I just could not stop reading it. I don't get that.
Wine and War is a very easy read book in a fairly informal way that was for this reviewer is a little too less than academic in presentation, a style that I prefer when reading history. There is a great book out there on this subject in my opinion and someone such as Lizzie Collingham who wrote an exceptional book called The taste of War would have been ideal. The authors were of a journalistic background and it showed. The coverage was based mainly on the reminiscing of events of various and famous wine families, that unfortunately lacked a seamlessness in delivery that had me scurrying to look up the index as to where these people had been previously mentioned. This is not usually a problem for me, but the authors seemed to chop the stories told around a little too haphazardly.
Be that as it may, there is a lot to learn. That the Nazi's placed expert bureaucrat's called Weinführers into the various appellations to supervise the purchasing of France's great wines for transport back to Germany was a new one for me. Some were very good in their dealings with the French wine industry, others less so. That the US and British Intelligence tracked the enemy troop strength via shipment of wine back to Germany I had not previously known. Dietrich Von Choltitz's decision to not lay waste to Paris was made after a conversation with Pierre Taittinger I had no previous memory of reading.
Being a breezy anecdotal book it also had some moments of humour. The authors quote Wynford Vaughn-Thomas from a book called How I Liberated Burgundy. The French Military gave an unnamed US Colonel through Vaughn-Thomas a gift of fine wines from about 20 vineyards.
Vaughan-Thomas was quoted from his book as follows.........
‘These are the greatest wines of France. Guard them with care; rest them; then make sure they are room temperature before they are served.'
“Don't worry,' replied the American. ‘The doc knows all about this Frog liquor, and we'll invite the French over to drink it.'
The Americans held a lavish reception; trumpets were sounded and a column of waiters entered, bearing the precious burgundy on silver trays. But to his horror, Vaughan-Thomas saw that the wines were gently bubbling in the bottles. ‘We're in luck,' whispered an American colonel, ‘the doc's hotted up the stuff with medicinal alcohol.'
“The French were aghast. All eyes turned to General de Monsabert, he had led them, through North Africa and Italy, but this was the moment of crisis. He stood up, fixed his eyes on his staff and ordered them to take up their glasses.
‘To our comrades in arms, les braves Americans,' he declared, before draining his glass to the last drop. Then in a low voice that only his close neighbours could hear, he murmured: ‘Liberation, liberation, what crimes have been committed in thy name!'” Indeed!
Maybe not my type of presentation, but I do recommend this to anyone that has an interest in the subject.
I thought that Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell an exceptionally fine book, so an eventual read of this collection of short stories was always going to eventually happen.
And a most enjoyable light read this has been. Typical of short story collections some hit the mark, others less so.
The first tale The Ladies of Grace Adieu references Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and was in fact culled from that from the final edit. Mr Simonelli or the Fairy Widower, I thought an exceptional piece of fantasy and worth the entrance fee alone. I would love to read a full length novel of the life and adventures of Mr Simonelli if Susanna Clarke was going to maybe write something further. I thought this a very thematic tale told about the treatment of others that are dissimilar. Two other stories, Tom Brightwind and Tom Brightwind were also very good.
This can be a standalone read for anyone that has not read Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell but if other readers were less keen on that book they will be indifferent to this collection, I would imagine.
Late edit: after writing and posting the above, I read a very impressive review of Mr Simonelli or the Fairy Widower that is worth a look for anyone interested.
https://www.revenantjournal.com/contents/not-entirely-flattering-revealing-mr-simonellis-fairy-nature/
The battles of the Kokoda Track campaign, along with Gallipoli in The Great War, have played a part in modern Australia's military history that through popular narrative has seeped into modern psyche as what defines us as a nation.
https://www.dcceew.gov.au/parks-heritage/heritage/places/list-overseas-places-historic-significance-australia/kokoda-track
This Australian Federal Government parks and heritage web site states “The story of Kokoda is one of courage, endurance, mateship and sacrifice. These qualities are declared on the Australian memorial erected at Isurava, the site of a major attack by the Japanese in the last days of August 1942, in which both sides suffered heavy casualties.”
Author Paul Ham has written an account of the campaign in this very detailed book that probably deserves a wider readership beyond just that of Australia and those WW2 buffs who have delved deeper into the so-called lesser campaigns.
Ham has divided this telling into 5 parts covering each phase of the war. He is generous with very good maps throughout. The bibliography is extensive and uses both allied and Japanese sources, and what end notes I checked were good. The blurb on the back of my copy states that this is a “.....balanced portrayal...” that accounts for both perspectives. To give the author his fair due, I am not going to disagree. My read of Ham's book on Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War fell into very one-sided poor and populist rantings at times, but Kokoda has a far superior balance and certainly does not fall into the overuse of slang and vernacular as in that book.
Be that as it may, Ham is an author who wears his opinions on his sleeve and with that lacks subtly to lead the reader in a direction without some semblance of forceful opinion in his writing. An example would be his utter disdain with Australian General Thomas Blamey who he called “This appalling man...” Ham thought Blamey a self-promoter who took the glory of the eventual success of the campaign while deriding those below who were trying to win what were a series of brutal battles in the fact that there was no quarter given nor prisoners taken during fighting in at times virtually impenetrable jungle. Ham had no time for Blamey concerning his criticism and use of nearly untrained militia (derisively called Choco's in the vernacular, as in chocolate soldiers) that were thrown head first very early against an invading Japanese force that was battle hardened due to other campaigns since as early as 1936. His treatment of some of the commanders on the track itself also came in for some serious criticism. Blamey, along with MacArthur it can be added, he accused of being a spin doctor.
Page 479 “Blamey and MacArthur received the warmest congratulations from their respective Governments, and praised the ‘magnificent and prolonged effort' of the troops. The commanders singled out Brigadier Wooton for high decoration, in recognition of his ‘soundness and steadiness in control' and ‘valour and determination in execution'
Macarthur personally congratulated Eichelberger ‘Dear Bob' he wrote ‘I am glad that you were not injured in the fighting. I always feared that your incessant exposure might result fatally. With a hearty slap on the back, Most cordially, MacArthur'
The supreme commander later failed to correct the impression that he personally oversaw the victory as Buna, and allowed the idea to percolate that he was somehow involved in a front-line role. An understandably embittered Eichelberger wrote to he wife at the time: ‘The great hero went home without seeing Buna before, during or after the fight while permitting press articles from his GHQ to say he was leading his troops into battle.'”
A final word from a Second Lieutenant in the Japanese army.
Page 491. “Troops began to wonder why they had shed so much blood for a place of no consequence, at the extremity of the empire. Rinzo Kanemoto wrote plaintively:
‘When you look around ... there is no agriculture. No towns ... What possible plus can our occupation of such a place offer to our national strength? Yet even given that, here we are, two large groups of white and yellow fighting over the Girwa area, flinging the fires of war at each other ... What on earth is all this for? That soldiers ... had to die so horribly to secure such a completely worthless piece of land! What is the bloody sense of that”
Recommended to anyone who has an interest in World War 2.
For the Term of His Natural Life was written between 1870 and 1872 and was serialised at the time in The Australian Journal that was also edited by the book's author Marcus Clarke. My copy read is the Penguin edition 2009 with an Introduction by George Ian Smith.
The intro is worth a read just to discover Mr Smith writing about modern Australia in that “Airlines cross Australia in one day......” and that “..........Only five days flying brings us back to Europe...” There have been marked improvements in travel to and from this island continent in the last decade!
First let's just say that I am glad that I did not have to read this at school, as has been said elsewhere literature of the Victorian age can be wasted on youthful readers. Certainly, the coincidences and luck in the plot would have driven me to severe criticism back in my youth. Be that as it may, we do tend towards a different outlook into older age as to how we approach and read. This was the first novel of Australian convict literature of note, and also later was described as the first of what has become known as Tasmanian Gothic. At the time of writing, the dark history of convict settlement in Van Diemen's land was still fresh in the memory of the public hence as a reader of colonial history, I now know its place in the cannon and the effect it has had on a reading public.
Clarke wrote in what can be called nowadays a mashup. Combining several known events of brutality into one novel and as a derring-do adventure that combines everything from murder and criminal activity, identity theft and sheer brutality, it makes for a bit of a page turner. It is also a grim reminder of man's inhumanity to man, no matter the circumstances.
The main protagonist is Richard Devine, the only son and heir of a filthy rich ship builder. Richard uses the name Rufous Dawes in a convoluted inheritance debacle, and when a murder happens is sentenced to life imprisonment to the colonies for crime he did not commit. The title is excellent as we get to read the story of what is indeed the term of his natural life, a life of great tragedy and brutality. The end is what all great Victorian era writers of all nations seemed to like, redemption. I was reminded of The Count of Monte Cristo and Les Miserable even though obviously these are entirely different settings.
I enjoyed the descriptions of Port Arthur and Norfolk Island. Having been to these two very beautiful but also tragic places I was able to visualise the writer's descriptions with ease and there is no doubt in my mind that the gruesome and appalling conditions being these colonial prisons it was not hard to reimagine, such were the excellent descriptions written. I have not been to Sarah Island, the other penal station in this book, but will make an effort in the coming years.
This is considered an Australian classic of the colonial era and has been in continuous publication since.
Highly recommended.
A Tale They won't Believe by Weddings Parties Anything
The sciences are without a doubt my weakest reads. Try as I might, I am at times unable to take all the information supplied in as the brain does not sponge the info up as I would like. Be that as it may, popular science books such as this have the occasion to bring some semblance of wow moments to my sieve like mind.
I had never really thought of the language differences between various cultures when looking and talking about colour, for example. The use of language in spatial situations was so interesting that I reread a few passages just to get my head around that concept. The peoples of the Guugu Yimithirr from north Queensland having no concept of Right or Left, but using North/South/East/West in terms of describing direction no matter where they were? The chapter that covered this Where The Sun Doesn't Rise In the East was fascinating. The gender differences in various languages were of particular interest, imagine the wars that have started just because of a misunderstood translation.
One comment I will make on the writing of language is that even the author got it wrong in one little passage. A man of the Guugu Yimithirr when discussing with linguists direction was quoted as saying “But white fellows wouldn't understand that.” Whitefella (or Blackfella) please when quoting indigenous Australians, I have never heard it different and suspect that if the author had known he may have written it that way. Did he miss any others, I asked myself?
Blackfella Whitefella
Recommended to anyone with an interest in language.
I got this book free in a neighbour swap library, glad I did to be honest. It takes some effort to write 235 pages about a nice tune with mysterious lyrics, and it takes even bigger effort to read those 235 pages about the said song.
This ditty was actually played in a dental waiting room while I waited earlier this month by a male / female duet. I had no idea who they were but can say hand on heart I was very happy to have got the call to have my mouth looked into to just get away from the tune.
At various times in these pages, the author mentions that there were calls for a moratorium on its use, even by the songwriter himself. It got used so often that at one time one writer wrote in disgust it had become “...... cheap emotional shorthand for overwhelming spiritual feelings.” The writer of that went on to say that it had become “.......so common that it had been drained of its power to move” Amen to that, I say.
I like the Shrek films version by the Velvet Underground bloke, but then I would because I consider him a genius. The fella who died in the river I caught live back in the day and do not even recall him doing the track, in fact the only three things I recall from that gig was him yelling obscenities at his mixing desk for it all being too loud, him doing a rip-roaring version of a song that starts with “And right now... right now... right now it's time to... kick out the jams, mother———!” and a couple of young lasses next to me talking about how the chap we were seeing was doomed to an early death. How was that for prescient vision!
As to the composer (who I might add was lucky enough to have had his picture taken on a Greek Island with Charmian Clift in the 60's) as a homage to him, I dug out his album released on February 2, 1988 and had a play and can say that this would have been a far more interesting subject to write a book about.
Recommended to the couple that named their daughter after the song, but who as she got older called herself Lulu.
After a couple of thought provoking novels this compilation seemed ideal to read before deciding what to read next.
27 stories in total with nearly all the writers being unknown to me but for the obvious being J.M. Coetzee
A couple stood out, with the majority interesting without reaching great heights.
The first story was After School by Nathan Besser and I had to say I thought this schoolboy meets schoolgirl tale very good indeed, covering that forever story of the boy falling for the girl and the girl not turning up.
An older boy meets girl story by Susan Coleridge called Unfinished Business was of a coincidental meeting of a woman and a man with a past, and the consequences of this latter meeting. Very good.
Siege by Amra Pajalic was in diary form of a mid-twenties girl in Sarajevo in 1993 and how she saw her day-to-day life under the terrors of the war. A poignant and very good story.
Historical short story Hadrian in Hell by Delia Falconer told in the first person by one of two brothers building water courses for the emperor. Very good.
The absolute standout for me was As a Woman Grows Older by J.M. Coetzee. I have never read Coetzee and if this is one of his lesser works I will be looking to read him in the future. A 78 year old Melbourne lady of letters travels to France to see, for what may be her last time, her two expatriate children. Offers from the children as to her future are discussed and make for a fascinating read. Outstanding short story.
A useful collection for those that need something to bridge that gap we sometimes need after deeper reads.
The planet chokes and burns and there is mass extinction. On the other hand, there is the most (un?)intelligent species trying to stay alive when staying alive should not be an option. But are they staying alive or just heading towards disappearing little by little, body parts and all?
This is my third book by Richard Flanagan. For me the most difficult to read so far but then, strangely, the most thought-provoking. Blending heavy metaphor, magic realism, stream of conscious delivery; add the human elements of love, brutality, indifference and egoism, just to name a few, we are asked, do we think about the future or do we just ignore it for what it might or might not be? Let all just disappear, except that that suit our collective self-importance?
Recommended to those that only wish to look at social media Not really. .
Andy Miller of Backlisted podcast fame has had an ongoing love affair with the writing of Anita Brookner to the point he made a joke about there being a “cult” readership due to his enthusiasm. That enthusiasm would never have made me think I would walk into a charity shop and find not one but four novels by Brookner all for the princely sum of $2 each. I grabbed them all, I mean, what more can I complain about? If I didn't like the writer that much, it was a donation to a charity at the very least.
So with absolutely no intention to particularly start this cult writer, I did exactly that. The truth is that I would once have run a thousand kilometres from a novel such as this as it had minimal dialogue, long passages that were deep descriptions of individuals and of place and was then lacking a particularly strong plot.
For whatever reason I could not put Incidents in the Rue Laugier down, the writing is extraordinarily good and that has to be part of it, the depth of the characters was of such quality in the descriptors used I found myself just compelled to keep reading. As to the theme, it covers that reality that the vast majority live, a life unfulfilled.
The story is written by Maffy, the daughter of the two main protagonists, Edward and Maud. Maffy in the first chapter admits that this is an unreliable narration of her parent's life and is based on a few words written in a notebook that she found after her mother passed, and also confesses to having no idea as to their lives and that the tale told is fabrication. With that Maffy tells of the meeting of Edward and Maud and how they “fell in love” and got married, had a child and then lived and died in an all very simple and so middle class bourgeois way. And that is it!
But.......it is so well told and written I could not put this down. This was neither unhappy nor happy families, it was the story of lives that might have been, and the sense of loneliness that pervaded both characters as their very existence just chugged along and along. I am amazed how much I enjoyed this and I too join the cult.
Highly recommended for the sublime writing alone.
An easy to read book that is conceptually very interesting but for this reviewer not that well written. I have read this very quickly and have enjoyed the pace, the characters and ideas behind the story told.
The labyrinth at the centre of the book is the device used to bring patterns to the life of 1st person narrator Erica Marsden who moves to a seaside village to be closer to her incarcerated son serving life in a nearby prison.
Erica tells of her family relationships that have been less than satisfactory and how she deals mentally with this by researching and then building a labyrinth in the sandy back yard of the beach shack she owns and lives in. She is assisted by a drifter stonemason called Jurko who seems to me to be the epitome of the epigraph “The cure for many ills, noted Jung, is to build something.” And that is the point of the novel I would suggest.
This is the most contemporary of recent Australian novels I have read and being a winner of the 2021 Miles Franklin award I would expect nothing less than the philosophical depth that this novel offers with that award.
But...... and I suspect I may be in the minority here, I found the first-person narrative at times poorly delivered. At times there seemed to be several passages in a row that began with, for example,“I...”. Sentences after sentence was interspersed with that “doing” verb, and that seemed to stand out at certain times.
Recommended nonetheless for the depth of a subtle telling of a very good story.
What I like about books such as this is not only the story told but that I, the reader, is challenged with what the writer is trying to say be that via philosophical thoughts, analogy, metaphor and much more.
What I really really do like! is when an author brings to my attention people and places I have either not heard of or know little about. For example, at one point, the unnamed narrator is given a gift of the works of Canadian classical pianist Glen Gould. As I type these words, Gould has appeared in a streaming playlist I am listening to with a piece from his Goldberg Variations. Perfect timing, I mused to myself, I must explore Gould works later. I must also look to see the art of Stella Bowen, I must revisit the art of Ian Fairweather, art that I have seen and enjoyed, I must also one day read Virginia Woolf.
Which brings me to what I got out of this odd little read, and that is rather a lot. The unnamed narrator tells what may be an autobiographical tale told in 5 parts. Some combines what I presume is lifetime experience and then adds essays, history and myth into the tale told. This seemed a little ham fisted at times as opposed to being seamless, but did not stop the enjoyment of the journey. I can be truthfully honest and say that I had no idea what the old fairy tale of The Handless Maiden that was referred to occasionally through the telling and specifically at the end had to do with the main protagonists, but then analogy and metaphor have never been a particular for me.
Be that as it may, this read had its charms and challenges. In the chapter The Adultery Factor the factor of adultery from a women's (feminist) point of view was thought-provoking. The chapter Sight and Solitude, an essay on just that, sight and solitude, was for someone as myopic as me so good I reread it immediately. For those of us that read a book about 297mm from our nose as the best distance to get anything clear, the unnamed narrator had a lot to say that I for sure related to. The Winterbourne was a chapter reminiscing for school days unrewarding. The Orchard was about the gardens that some love.
The solitude of the individual and their garden may just have been the pervading theme. Maybe? I am not sure, but then so what. If a read such as this provokes such thoughtfulness in me, I can hardly complain.
Recommended to those that like their solitude and their garden.