Golconda

The first of a trilogy written by noted Australian author Vance Palmer unfortunately fails to deliver what should have been a fine book considering the subject. Golconda is loosely based on the life and times of Ted Theodore and the development of north Queensland mining town Mount Isa.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Theodore
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Isa

Galconda grows from a sparse district with loose ore for freelance prospectors into a company town and with that all the trials and tribulations that go with that growth when big international capital realises that there is money to be made. The chief protagonist of the book is one Macy Donovan (Ted Theodore) and his story is told as to how he becomes an organiser for the Australian Workers Union and on to his eventual election into State Parliament. Set just after the Great War this should have been great fiction as there is little wrong with the story itself and the themes of change and its effect on the individual is universal. Sadly and to take a quote directly from the authors own writing it “....plodded on, entangling himself in the barbed-wire of his own long sentences”. And that is the trouble. The book just plodded on monotonously. The writing was dense and lacked life. It was hard to get any energy up about the characters and the denseness of the writing was at times stream of consciousness in delivery.

I have the other 2 books in the trilogy and will eventually read them out. The third won the Miles Franklin award just after Palmer died in 1959. Both Palmer and his wife were held in high regard in Australian literary circles during their lifetimes. All three books in this trilogy are now out of print and I personally found them hard to get hold of. Sadly this first book was a disappointment.