Putting aside the complex environmental questions surrounding AI and its data centres for the moment, I want to talk about using AI. I know it’s easy to naysay new technologies. I’ve been guilty of it myself, such as when smartphones first appeared on the scene. And, based on last night’s experience, I could say I was right to be negative, because there in a restaurant was a family comprising mum, dad and young daughter (at least that seemed to be the configuration) all glued to their devices. Not for a few minutes, but for much of the time they were there. The optics, to use current jargon, were not great, but, who am I do judge? What do I know of their relationship, their day, their negotiated agreements? It’s so easy to judge …

But I digress. My point, really, is that we should probably use technology before we abuse it. Take AI, the current technology we love to hate. It can, I believe, be a useful tool in our toolkit. It’s just that, like all tools, you have to know how to use it.

This brings me to Eve Langley, a writer much loved by Bill (the Australian Legend) – and me (posts). I am currently travelling through Gippsland, which is where Langley’s fascinating, strange, unforgettable novel, The pea pickers is set. I have travelled through Gippsland a few times, but this time I thought I’d think a little more seriously on Langley – though I wish I had brought the book with me.

Anyhow, this morning we had the opportunity to visit the little town of Metung on the Gippsland Lakes. So, I thought I’d ask ChatGPT about Eve Langley’s relationship with the place. It responded to my first general question with:

There’s no strong evidence that Eve Langley specifically lived in or spent significant time in Metung.

What is well documented is that Langley and her sister worked their way through rural Gippsland as agricultural labourers in the 1920s, experiences that became the basis for her novel The Pea-Pickers. Her writing is deeply associated with Gippsland landscapes and communities.  

Hmm, that’s not quite right I thought. I’m sure she went there … so when, at the end of its response, it asked me:

If you’re asking because you’re reading The Pea-Pickers, I can also trace which parts of East Gippsland and the Gippsland Lakes district are thought to have influenced particular scenes in the novel.

Yes please! Again, I won’t share the full response, but it started with

The geography of The Pea-Pickers is partly real, partly transformed through memory and myth. Eve Langley turns East Gippsland into something almost legendary, but many locations can still be traced.

Then it traced the sisters’ journey, using these headings:

• Dandelong to Bairnsdale: the departure
• Bairnsdale: gateway to the adventure
• Metung and the Gippsland Lakes: the heart of the novel
• Lakes Entrance: the edge of the world

Metung, eh? Under each of these headings it provided information, but I’ll just share what it says about Metung:

This is where the connection becomes especially interesting. [It does, does it!]

A detailed literary essay tracing Langley’s movements states that the sisters travelled from Bairnsdale by steamer across the lakes to Metung and worked in fields around the Gippsland Lakes.  

Another literary account of the novel describes them taking the train to Bairnsdale and then a ferry to Metung, where they meet Macca and begin the central pea-picking episodes of the book.  

So while there is little evidence Eve Langley permanently lived in Metung, there is reasonably strong literary evidence that:

• she knew the Metung district,
• she travelled there,
• and she used it as part of the landscape of The Pea-Pickers.  

Many of the novel’s most lyrical passages—walking beside water, dreaming of love, wandering between work camps, looking across the lakes and toward the sea—seem connected to this lakes district.  

Hmmm, again … given I had not asked whether she “permanently lived” in Metung. Anyhow, after some “chat” about work camps, ChatGPT, remembering my original request about Metung, added another heading, Why Metung matters, and said:

Metung sits almost perfectly within the emotional geography of The Pea-Pickers.

It combines:

• agricultural land,
• lake scenery,
• access by boat,
• seasonal labour,
• isolation,
• and proximity to the ocean.

Those are exactly the elements that dominate the novel’s Gippsland sections. Even when Langley isn’t naming Metung directly, much of the book’s atmosphere feels anchored in that lakes country.  

One fascinating detail is that later writers who retraced Langley’s footsteps specifically connected her journey to the Bairnsdale–Metung steamer route, suggesting that Metung was not just a convenient stop but part of the remembered landscape that entered her fiction.

Now to another fascinating detail – ChatGPT’s sources! They are (and they provide links): Wikipedia, The Australian Legend, Whispering Gums, GoodReads, Trojan Press, VictorianPlaces.Com, and TravelVictoria.Com. Rather a grab-bag, and not completely reassuring, which is not to insult Bill’s and my work, but we write reviews which are as much opinion as fact. However, the Trojan Press source is interesting. It’s a long essay by Chester Eagle, whom I don’t know. However, the National Library of Australia, which holds his papers, says he (1933-2021) was an author who published “several collections of short stories, a number of novels and three autobiographical works, the first of which Mapping the paddocks (1984), won the Age Book of the Year Award for non-fiction” and who began publishing his own works under the name Trojan Press In the mid 1990s.

Australian publisher Transit Lounge lists several books by him, including the nonfiction, Hail and farewell: an evocation of Gippsland (1971). They say his earlier books were published by Heinemann, Wren, McPhee Gribble and Harper Collins, before he published “privately under the on-line Trojan Press imprint”.

Eagle’s essay is well worth reading. After introducing his encounters with Langley’s book, he writes:

Readers may wonder at this point which of my various readings of The Pea Pickers, or observations on the book and its writer, I am asking them to consider. My answer is that I am trying to lay out the various reactions I have had to the book in order to ask myself why I now think it is so wonderful, and – even more difficult – to try to establish the best way of reading this improbable work.

I like this, because it captures some of my trajectory with this novel.

But back to the topic of this post. Where does it leave me and ChatGPT/AI? Pretty much where I started, which is that it is a tool – nothing more, nothing less. Used with care – by which I mean using our commonsense and information literacy skills – it can be part of our research. Not the authority – indeed it is fallible as I have found more than once – but an assistant that can provide clues, keywords, angles to follow, ideas to consider.

Oh, and we did explore Metung and Bairnsdale today. This pic comes from Bairnsdale.

As for AI’s environmental impact, and the many other questions surrounding it, I’ll leave those for another day.

Meanwhile, what do you think?