Murray Bail, The voyage (Review)

/ Whispering Gums / 6 Comments
Murray Bail, The voyage, book cover

Courtesy: Text Publishing

It took me a while to read Murray Bail‘s latest novel The voyage. I started it before we went overseas but didn’t quite finish it, and decided not to carry it with me. So, 8 weeks later, I picked it up and found it surprisingly easy to continue. I say surprising because it is a rather astonishing novel – in style, structure, and also, I think, theme. Like other works of Bail’s, particularly Eucalyptus, it manages to feel old and new at the same time, which is rather the point, since it shifts back and forth between the Old World (Europe) and the New (Australia), between high society Vienna and a cargo ship returning to Australia with piano inventor Delage and escapee from the Old World, Elisabeth von Schalla, on board.

It’s a short book, just 200 pages, but it’s by no means simple. Short books, I’ve found, often demand the most of their readers. Anyhow, Bail, you may remember, gave the opening keynote address at the National Library of Australia’s Writing the Australian Landscape conference. It was a provocative talk, but I won’t reiterate what I’ve said before. Instead I want to refer to his plea for writers to take stylistic and intellectual risks. This is what Bail has done here.  There’s a Patrick White-like intensity, but the style is all Bail.

First though, as usual, a few words about the plot. The story concerns 46-year-old piano-inventor Frank Delage coming to Europe – specifically Vienna – to sell his new Delage piano. It’s a cheeky thing to do, this, but he gives it a go with a certain naiveté perhaps that comes with being from the New World. He meets the Schalla family, first the mother Amelia von Schalla and then the husband, Konrad, and their 36-year-old daughter Elisabeth. There are two main plot tensions – will he sell his piano, and what will happen between him and the two “landlocked women”. The piano plot is resolved clearly (though not necessarily neatly) while the relationship plot is not so clean, even though early in the novel we know that Elisabeth is on the boat with him going to Australia.

Now to the risky business. This is a novel with no chapters, and it mostly comprises long paragraphs that last several pages. These are somewhat unusual, though not particularly risky. The chronology alternates between Delage’s time in Vienna and his voyage home on the ship, with occasional flashbacks to Australia. This sort of narrative structure isn’t unusual these days either. But, what is unusual, what is risky, is how he alternates his chronology. It is done organically, fluidly, mid-paragraph and even – sometimes – mid-sentence. For example, the following sentence starts in the present, on the ship, with the subject being two of the passengers, and then shifts back to Amalia in Vienna. The next sentence returns to the ship, but now with Elisabeth:

Now the sisters faced the sun, closing their eyes, allowing the warmth to soften their thoughts, the older, forsaken one undoing the top buttons of her blouse to extend the tan, after first rubbing cream into her feet and throat, the buttons on Amalia’s, pleated, high-collar blouse he found to be imitation buttons, decoration only, on her back well-hidden by the Italian pleating, which gave the impression of vertical stripes was a tiny zipper of unexpected elegance. For Elisabeth, it was too hot on the small deck, she went back to the cabin, favouring an Austrian complexion over acquiring a tan … (p. 142)

Bail, it seems, loves the comma! It looks tricky to read: if you try to analyse a sentence or paragraph, it defeats you, the syntax is odd. And yet, it flows seamlessly from place to place, character to character, idea to idea. It is artful, carefully composed, but reads naturally, surprisingly so.

The important question, however, is how does this style relate to the theme? And here I’d like to return to Bail’s address. He spoke of Australians not being sure of who we are. We have a thin layer of history, he said, by contrast with the Old World and its long, albeit often grim history. “What is bad for a country can be good for art”, he proposed. Oh dear, I’m not sure we want to generate a few revolutions or civil wars for ourselves just to give artists something to chew on! He also said that “I hadn’t quite realised my novels are centred around journeys … My people are instinctively hot-footing it out of here, turning away from the apparent barrenness.” Bail senses a continuing discomfort about the New World’s “place”, which is articulated by Delage: “It goes without saying that they [the Viennese] would stick their noses up in the air at an intruder, a concert grand made in a hopeless backward place, Australia”.

And so, in The voyage, we have a dialogue between Old and New, which is mirrored in the style. Bail sees a tension between respecting the old and encouraging or supporting the new, between certainty and uncertainty, between world-weariness and naivete. I was initially surprised. Surely we have resolved our identity crisis; surely Old World-New World discussions are old hat. But he has a point. The Old World does, whether it’s justified or not, seem sure of itself in a way that we aren’t – “the old buildings, industrial, older than anything in Sydney or at least different, carved stonework above the windows and doors, left him feeling out of place”. It’s natural to feel out-of-place in a different culture, but there’s something else going on here too – and it’s regarding the fact that we Australians often feel lesser, and apologise even, for the fact that we, as exemplified by our buildings, are new. You hear it all the time – the awe and admiration – from Australians travelling overseas. And yet, our land is older, and indigenous Australian culture is probably the oldest continuous culture in the world. No wonder indigenous writers like Jeanine Leane get a little fired up!

Anyhow, Bail explores this tension through Delage’s attempts to sell his New World piano to the Old World, and his triangular relationship with the von Schalla mother and daughter. What happens to his piano – who buys it, how it is used – provides a biting comment on both New World and Old World pretensions. How the relationships develop is more nuanced and less resolved, leaving the way open for growth and change. Because, of course, the novel is not simply about Old World meets New World. It is about New in a much broader sense. It’s about “being open to the new”, in all fields of endeavour, whether this be piano manufacture, writing, the arts in general, or even the self. Indeed, at the book’s conclusion, Delage, who had earlier felt “without edges”,  senses that he has “become a slightly different person”.

For all this seriousness, though, The voyage is a quietly funny, satirical book. Bail delights in skewering self-importance and pomposity in critics, avant-garde artists, architects, and business men, to name a few of his targets. Women generally fare better. Viennese Amalia says she enjoys “the discomfort of the unexpected” and Elisabeth demonstrates that she does by joining Delage on his cargo ship.

I’ve laboured over this review as you can probably tell. I’ve rambled, and may not have made much sense. It’s a slippery novel that can be tackled from many angles and it doesn’t resolve all its tensions. This is good. I enjoyed the novel, but I suggest you ignore my review and read the book yourself. I’d love to know what you think.

Lisa (ANZLitLovers) has also reviewed the book, and enjoyed its inventiveness.

Murray Bail
The voyage
Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2012
200pp
ISBN: 978192192261

Monday musings on Australian literature: Writing the Australian landscape (3)

/ Whispering Gums / 6 Comments
Wide Brown Land sculpture

Wide Brown Land (National Arboretum)

Back in August I wrote two posts (here and here) about the National Library of Australia’s conference, Writing the Australian landscape. At the time I said that I would provide a link when the talks became available on-line.

Well, they apparently went on-line a month or so ago and the NLA very kindly tweeted the fact to me. However, I was overseas at the time and having a semi-break from constant on-line connection – and have consequently only caught up with the tweet now. Better late than never eh?

So, if you are still interested in checking out any of the wonderful talks I discussed in my posts, here is the link.

As you may remember from my posts, I found it all excellent, but if I had to recommend some to you, these would be the ones:

  • Murray Bail‘s keynote address on day 1, which was provocative about what he sees as our (Australian) need to define ourselves by our landscape. He concluded by asking readers to be “explorers” and open to new ways of writing, to not expect “landscape” to be the way into Australianness.
  • Bill Gammage‘s keynote address on day 2, which was provocative in a different way, arguing that there is a progression from notions of “landscape” and “place” to “country” which, in indigenous terms, is synonymous with “culture”. He argued that we still “view” the land as outsiders, rather than seeking to relate to it in a more spiritual, organic way, and challenged us to be willing to learn from indigenous Australians.
  • Jeanine Leane’s paper which, among other things, confronted us with our (that is, white/non-indigenous) preconceived notions about what we define as Australian classics. Now I have the paper I can quote directly. It was powerful. She said:

Through Xavier Herbert, Patrick White, David Malouf & more recently Kate Grenville who among others have been hailed as nation writers & what I saw and still see to some extent in Australian literature to date is a continuous over-writing of settler foundation stories which overwrite Aboriginal experience and knowledge. Settlers are always re-settling and Australian literature really reflects this and the critics and scholars write of such works as if everyone reading it is also a settler reader.

It is very hard, Leane showed us, to step outside our own world-view … but that’s why we read, talk about reading, and listen to readers and writers isn’t it? I certainly found my world-view shifting as we went through the weekend. How do I, as a non-indigenous Australian, need and want to relate to this land I also call home. It would be presumptuous to try to relate to it as an indigenous person does. But we are lucky here to have people with such a deep knowledge of and relationship with the land. We can learn a lot from them: practical things about how to care for the land, and, perhaps more importantly, what a true relationship with the land really means and the responsibility accompanying that.

Anyhow, I’m very glad to be able to share the link to the papers, and would love to hear from you if you do read any of them.

Dorothy Johnston, Eight pieces on prostitution (Review)

/ Whispering Gums / 19 Comments
Dorothy Johnston, Eight pieces on prostitution book cover

Lifted, with approval I hope, from Johnston’s website

A few months ago I wrote a Monday Musings on the Australian Society of Authors’ digital publishing initiative, Authors Unlimited e_Book portal. At the time I decided to try it out and bought Dorothy Johnston‘s collection of short stories, Eight pieces on prostitution.

The collection comprises 7 short stories and a long story or novella. One of the stories, ‘Mrs B’, I read earlier this year in Meanjin‘s Canberra edition. Some of the other stories have been published before too: ‘The Man Who Liked To Come With The News’ (The State of the Art, 1983), ‘Commuting’ (Island, issue 52, Spring 1992, and elsewhere), and ‘The Studio’ (Southerly, Winter 1996).

The first thing I should say about this collection is that it is not salacious reading. That is, it’s not erotica. Johnston’s interest is the lives, the experience, of prostitutes as people. Who are they? Why are they doing what they are doing? How do they negotiate their relationships, professional and personal? How do they live the life they’ve chosen and are they happy?

Johnston’s prostitutes are neither glamorous nor tarty, and most work for themselves or in small establishments. They are not the prostitutes of popular imagination. That is, they tend not to work in fancy parlours under control of a madam nor in that sleazy underworld borderland managed by pimps. They are, instead, either ordinary employees or small businesswomen. Some are career prostitutes, others are university students or single mothers who need to support themselves, while still others, like Eve in ‘The Studio’, are a little more mysterious:

She lives in a small flat. She chose the national capital because she imagined it to be a city where she could fade into the background, where she could hide.
Johnston’s characters are often wistful or even a little sad, but they are never pathetic. They are intelligent, and Johnston respects not judges them. They are not powerless, either, though sometimes the power they have is limited to their domain and can be tenuous. They can be a little lost, or perhaps just at a cross-roads in their lives. Maria in ‘The Cod-piece and the Diary Entry’ is uncertain about the world and her place in it. She thinks, when she moves and loses a client:
Looking back, she could not shake the feeling that she’s been on the point of understanding something important while in Harry’s company, that understanding had been no more than a breath away.
Sandy in ‘Names’ admires university student Gail’s strength and resilience:

She never let herself fall into a chair like I did when she came back from a client, slumping my stomach and letting the smile drop off my face.

There is a continuity between these characters and the three women in her novel The house at number 10 which I reviewed earlier this year. Like Elizabeth Jolley, Johnston is not afraid to re-use or develop characters across her oeuvre. I rather like that.

The pieces are set in places known to Johnston – Canberra and Melbourne. We get a clear sense of those cities, but even more we are let into the rooms the prostitutes inhabit – the ones they work in, the ones they relax in between clients. We learn about the things that are part of their daily routine. Sophie, for example, in ‘Commuting’, finds that when she steps outside work
petrol fumes are a relief after hours of perfumed towels and bubble bath.
The final piece is the novella ‘Where the Ladders Start’. The title comes from Yeats’ poem, ‘The Circus Animals’ Desertion’:
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.

It concerns a three-woman brothel established by Sue, who’d been dreaming for years of a “better system”. It’s “a co-operative … Tough that word, but they’d risen to its challenges”. Now though, the dream is being severely tested as they cope with the death of a client, on the first page, from erotic asphyxiation, “the choking game”.  The story explores the “one for all, all for one” ideal. Are there limits to trust, and how far should you take loyalty, particularly when it starts to be to your own detriment? Johnston sets the story at the beginning of the new millennium adding an ironic overlay to the situation confronting the women. What sort of millennium are they setting up for themselves by their response to the death?

As in all her stories, Johnston’s view of human nature here is warm but realistic, clear-eyed. She pits the “never let a chance go by” attitude against the desire to protect, care and trust, and then tests that against the need for self-preservation.

Johnston’s language is a delight to read. She’s precise but expressive, using imagery with a light touch:

The freedom to ask each other questions danced and shimmied in the air.

She can be quietly ironic:

Laura went on sitting in the kitchen like a Buddha, or more accurately a simpleton, a girl who’d left her mind someplace and forgotten to go back for it.

Is Laura simple or not is the question we ponder through most of the story.

In dealing with a mysterious death, “Where the Ladders Start” introduces us to that other string on Johnston’s writing bow, the crime novel. It’s a clever story, well-plotted, nicely maintaining a tension between mystery and clarity. Like most of the stories, there’s no simple resolution. Life, Johnston shows, is a messy business.

You’ve probably gathered by now that I thoroughly enjoyed this collection. While there is a commonality between the women, giving the collection a lovely coherence, there is also difference. Each character is unique, each story engaging. If there’s an overall theme, it is one of survival, or perhaps more accurately, resilience. Her women get on with life. They make decisions, some good, some bad, some we are not sure about, but, and here’s the important thing, they don’t stand still. Do read it. At $9.95, I reckon this is a steal.

Dorothy Johnston
Eight pieces on prostitution
Australian Society of Authors, 2013
202pp.
Availability: Online download for $9.95 from the ASA site

Delicious descriptions from Down under: Murray Bail on composers’ houses

/ Whispering Gums / 23 Comments
Beethoven's birth house

Beethoven’s birth house

During our recent trip to Europe we managed to follow the trails of a few composers*. We saw statues of JS Bach, CPE Bach, Felix Mendelssohn and Ludwig van Beethoven. We visited Eisenach, where Bach was born and saw the church where he was baptised. We visited Leipzig, where he worked for 27 years and saw the church where he wrote most of his best-known compositions. We visited the house in Weimar where Franz Liszt was based for the last 20 or so years of his life, and the house in Bonn where Beethoven was born. In a previous European trip we visited the house in Salzburg where Mozart was born. We’ve enjoyed this aspect of our tourism, the way it helps put these composers into some sort of geographic and historical perspective.

Given this, and my current interest in the meaning and value of travel, I was therefore rather tickled to read, just this morning, Murray Bail‘s comment in The voyage on composers’ houses:

… the idea of turning composers’ houses into holy houses with perfect wallpaper, bare desk and polished floorboards is more a display of falsity than history, although it hardly deters the visitors who go into every room, wanting to add layers to their general knowledge, mouths open in wonder, in Mozart’s case, amazing how a family with so many children could fit in such a space, how Mozart managed to work with his family around him, making the usual family racket, or the curator’s immaculate recreation of Beethoven’s rooms, not a speck of dust to be seen, though everyone knows he lived in disorder or squalor.

Oh dear, he does have a point!

Franz Liszt's bed

Franz Liszt’s actual bed

Indeed, in our experience, some (many, in fact) of these homes no longer have the composer’s furniture but have been furnished in period style. The curators don’t always even know what sort of furniture the famous inhabitant had, unless there are letters or some sort of contemporary inventory to tell them. In Liszt’s case though, his perspicacious supporter/ruler, Grand Duke Carl Alexander ordered within days of his death that the house be preserved because he knew fans would want to pay homage:

Since […] it can be assumed that Liszt’s innumerable friends and admirers […] will pay homage to the memory of the departed by visiting the rooms which he lived in, the Grand Duke strictly commands that nothing may be changed of the furniture and decorations, that is to the furnishings in the broadest sense, in the rooms in which Liszt lived.  (from the audioguide)

The furniture there really was Liszt’s. Does that make a difference? Do we feel more reverence or awe because we know the great man (or woman) sat on that chair? Is our experience somehow less, if we know the furniture isn’t original? I guess it depends on the tourist.

How does a composer’s house turned into a museum differ from a “straight” museum. Does displaying objects – authentic and/or “only” contemporaneous – in the composer’s own space add value to our experience? Is it better than seeing these objects in an all-purpose museum space, perhaps alongside those of other composers or people of the same time? What sort of experience or knowledge are we seeking? What, to take this to its logical conclusion, is the role of museums? These are the questions I’ve been pondering, in a heightened manner I must admit, since reading Michelle de Kretser‘s Questions of travel (my review).

Bail has discussed museums and tourists in other works – in his novel Homesickness, and in a story that I plan to read soon. Watch this space! Meanwhile, do you have thoughts on the topic? Do you like to visit writers’ homes for example? Why?

* Not to mention writers, and other famous or infamous people, of course.

Monday musings on Australian literature: GenreCon

/ Whispering Gums / 12 Comments

I returned from seven weeks of gallivanting abroad to several emails* about something called GenreCon, which will take place next week from October 11 to 13 at the State Library of Queensland. I hadn’t heard of this before, which is probably not surprising as it seems to be a new event. As you’ve probably guessed from the title, GenreCon is, as the website puts it:

… a three-day convention for Australian fans and professionals working within the fields of romance, mystery, science fiction, crime, fantasy, horror, thrillers, and more. One part party, one part celebration, one part professional development: GenreCon is the place to be if you’re an aspiring or established writer with a penchant for the types of fiction that get relegated to their own corner of the bookstore.

Readers here know that genre fiction is not my speciality, but that doesn’t mean I never read it, or that I’m not interested in keeping an eye on what’s happening to it, particularly in Australia. In fact, I’ve become far more aware and (generally) knowledgeable about genre fiction since my involvement with the Australian Women Writers’ Challenge – and that, I think, is a good thing. I have read and reviewed a few books this year that would fall under the genre hat, such as Anita Heiss‘s Paris dreaming (my review), Krissy Kneen‘s Steeplechase (my review), and Courtney Collins’ The burial (my review), and I’ve enjoyed each one, for different reasons.

As is usual at these sorts of events, there will be a number of international and national guests, some “author” and some “industry” as they put it. Australian author guests include she-who-needs-no-introduction-here Anita Heiss (my, she’s a hard-working woman), thriller writer Kathryn Fox, jack-of-all-trades writer John Birmingham, and romance writer Anne Gracie. Industry guests include reviewers, editors, and publishers. And again, like many conferences, there will be program streams: “the craft of genre writing, business and industry awareness, and researching for fiction”.

In the run-up to the conference, AustLit (about which I wrote a few months ago) has been sending out regular emails suggesting how its scholarly database reflects, or can be used to research, Australian genre fiction. For example:

  • AustLit has developed, since 2009, the Australian Popular Medievalism dataset, which lists Australian-written works (published between 1995-2010) featuring medieval ideas/settings. It’s currently a research project, but let’s hope the time-period is extended to cover all-time so that it can become a useful resource.
  • you can search on such topics as fairytales appearing in Australian genre fiction, or norse and germanic myths, or, presumably, a wide range of other topics, but these are the examples AustLit gives because they relate to conference topics.
  • media tie-in fiction (that is, fiction inspired by other media such as films, television, games) is an active segment of the genre world, but has attracted somewhat uneven scholarly attention to date.

In other words, while genre fiction may be at the lighter more fun end of the reading spectrum, it is nonetheless worthy of serious analysis and research. After all, if you want to know how people lived, what they thought, what influenced them, in a particular time, popular culture is a critical place to start. It’s important therefore that data be collected now … and so I’ve enjoyed AustLit’s taking up the gauntlet and demonstrating its contribution to the genre discussion.

I hope the convention goes well, and look forward to reading some reports of it after the event.

* Yes, I know I can read emails while I’m away but life was pretty busy on the road, and so I limited my reading to emails from family and friends. Consequently, I returned to a gazillion emails in my inbox waiting my rapt attention. Ha!

Miscellaneous writers on travel

/ Whispering Gums / 10 Comments

You may have noticed that I didn’t manage a Monday Musings last week. Mr Gums and I have just arrived home from our 7-weeks sojourn overseas – so normal service will resume soon, both here and in my reading of your blogs!

Today, though, I thought I’d share a small, eclectic collection of quotes about travellers and travelling that I’ve come across recently. All of them reflect, in some way, our experiences over the last 7 weeks.

Murray Bail in The voyage (2012)

The other passengers went off in different directions, their alertness to novel sights gave the impression they had more energy than the locals, an optical illusion, most likely.
Lafcadio Hearn in Glimpses of unfamiliar Japan (1894)
I climb and climb and climb, halting perforce betimes, to ease the violent aching of my quadriceps muscles …
Wine, beer and laptop

The modern traveller (Burgos, Spain)

Washington Irving in Tales of the Alhambra (1832)

… but above all we laid in an ample stock of good humor, and a genuine disposition to be pleased, determining to travel in true contrabandista style, taking things as we found them, rough or smooth, and mingling with all classes and conditions in a kind of vagabond companionship.

Jack Kerouac in On the road (1957)

Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.

Do these speak to you? And do you have any favourite travel quotes?

A note re advertising

I gather that while I’ve been away WordPress has been adding random advertisements to my blog (which they host for free) for cost recovery reasons. As I don’t monetise this blog in any way, I’ve decided for the moment not to pay to be ad-free. However, if the ads become irritating, please let me know and I will reconsider.

Monday musings on Australian literature: Qantas flight-length book deal

/ Whispering Gums / 20 Comments

Some of you have probably sussed that Whispering Gums is not at her usual desk – and you’d be right. I’ve been travelling since mid-August, mostly in Europe, and will be back home in early October. I had hoped to read some books and write reviews while on the road, but somehow the reviews haven’t happened. One review is nearly ready though!

However, here’s something interesting I read just before I left Australia in AustLit news. It was about a Qantas initiative involving commissioning, from Hachette, a series of paperback books “timed to be read during 10 of Qantas’s main flying routes”. The series is called “A Story for Every Journey” and, AustLit reports, will be offered to Qantas’ platinum Frequent Flyers.

The books will cover popular fiction and non-fiction genres  –  the ones we often call “airport books”. The book lengths are based on average reading speeds, taking into consideration time for napping and eating – or so I read in an article at goodereader.com. It quoted Mr Nobay, spokesperson for Hachette’s partner Droga5, as saying that

According to our literary friends at Hachette, the average reader consumes between 200 and 300 words per minute, which equates to about a page per minute.

This spokesperson also said that

for the longer flights, we accommodated some napping time and meals … After a few hours with a fine Qantas in-flight meal with Australian Shiraz, most people need a break from reading.

(Don’t you love the marketing?!)

AustLit said that one of the ten books – sounds like the initial plan is for ten – will be Kimberley Freeman’s Wildflower Hill which “has been suggested as the perfect read for travellers on the Sydney to Dubai route”. What a shame I didn’t have it when I flew that route a few weeks ago! I’ve never heard of Kimberley Freeman, which is apparently the nom de plume of Brisbane writer and academic Dr Kim Wilkins. Other authors include popular actor and author William McInnes, popular non-fiction writer Peter FitzSimmons and novelist Lian Hearn.

Anyhow, as goodereader comments

If this concept in reading takes off (pun intended) and if lawmakers insist on holding to strict regulations on the use of mobile devices during air travel, there is potential for a surge in not only print-reading, but also a shift towards more books being written with an intentional audience already in mind.

On my first reading of the initiative, I thought it was about commissioning books to be written for the purpose, but it sounds like it’s about identifying existing books that suit the criteria and re-packaging them for a new market. It may, of course, lead to books being written specifically for the market, as goodereader wonders.

I’m not sure I need to have books specially targeted to a set reading period, but I love the creative thinking behind this initiative. What do you think? Have you heard of anything similar?

Monday musings on Australian literature: Let’s get physical – The High Country

/ Whispering Gums / 12 Comments
From the top of Mt Kosciuszko

From the top of Mt Kosciuszko

This, my third Let’s Get Physical post, is once again about a region that’s not too far from me – the Australian High Country. When most people think of Australia, they think – at least I believe they do – of deserts and beaches, of red earth and golden sand. But, Australia does have a high country, albeit a fairly low one. Our highest mountain, Mt Kosciuszko, is only 2,228 metres (7,310 ft) high. It is so low that it doesn’t feature in any serious lists of “highest mountains” except highest in Australia! But this is beside the point. We do have (relatively) high country, we do have blues and greens, and we have life and literature associated with them.

This high country – the Australian Alps – is part of the Great Dividing Range which runs down pretty much the entire length of the east coast of Australia, some 3,500 kilometres (2,175 mi). It represented a significant barrier for the first white settlers who didn’t cross it until 25 years after they arrived … and this was north, near Sydney, where the highest point is half that of Kosciuszko!

Being (albeit low) high country, this is not a region of high permanent population – so not many writers call (or have called it) home. However, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t feature in Australian literature. Probably the most famous literary work associated with the high country is Banjo Paterson‘s  famous poem “The Man from Snowy River”, a ballad that romanticises high country bravery and horse-riding skills. Clancy (from Paterson’s poem “Clancy of the Overflow”) describes the man from Snowy River:

He hails from Snowy River, up by Kosciusko’s* side,
Where the hills are twice as steep and twice as rough,
Where a horse’s hoofs strike firelight from the flint stones every stride,
The man that holds his own is good enough.
And the Snowy River riders on the mountains make their home,
Where the river runs those giant hills between;
I have seen full many horsemen since I first commenced to roam,
But nowhere yet such horsemen have I seen.

The ride chronicled in the poem takes place north of the Snowy. Its aim is to retrieve a colt which has joined “the wild bush horses”, that is, the brumbies. And this brings me Elyne Mitchell who set her famous The silver brumby series of children’s books in the high country. Mitchell, who apparently won the Canadian downhill skiing championship in 1938, ran a property in the Mountains with her husband. She wrote many books, fiction and non-fiction, about the high country. “The Man from Snowy River” and The silver brumby have spawned multiple adaptations and merchandising galore.

Much of the literature associated with the high country though has been written by writers who live elsewhere. Australian environmental poet, Mark O’Connor, has written many poems about the region, including a collection devoted to it, Tilting at Snowgums: Australia’s High Country in Poetry and Photos. The collection includes his poem, “The New Ballad of The Man from Snowy River”, which “updates” Paterson’s original. Cleverly referencing this original, it takes a realistic, satiric look at “the romance” of the Snowy, addressing many issues including indigenous rights and environmental concerns. It is well worth a read.

The high country is a particularly popular setting for genre authors like Tony Parsons, Judy Nunn and Jennifer Scoullar.

Seaman's Hut

Seaman’s Hut, near Mt Kosciuszko

Besides the mountains, rivers and brumbies – not to mention the snow gums – the high country is noted for its huts. Klaus Hueneke, local historian and high country expert, has written several books about the region including Huts of the High Country and Huts of the Victorian Alps.  When touring the Victorian section of the High Country last year, I was rather entertained to read in the notes for The Huts Walk at Mt Hotham, that one of the huts you pass is the Silver Brumby Hut. This hut is, they say, the 2006-7 replica of the original. By original they mean the 1992 one built as a temporary prop for the film, The Silver Brumby. Ah well, I guess it’s part of history too!

For those interested in film, two unforgettable movies are set in the high country: Jindabyne, which was inspired, intriguingly, by a Raymond Carver short story, and Somersault.

* NOTE: When I went to school, we spelt the mountain “Kosciusko”, as Paterson spells it, but the “Kosciuszko” spelling was officially adopted in 1991 because that more accurately reflects the name’s origin.

Monday musings on Australian literature: Let’s get physical – The Monaro

/ Whispering Gums / 20 Comments

For my second Let’s Get Physical post, I thought I’d stay in my local region. The Monaro is a large region in southeastern New South Wales, extending from the southern and eastern boundaries of Canberra down to the Victorian border, and bounded on the east and west by mountain ranges. Much of it is treeless plain, but there are also rolling hills, rocky outcrops and jagged mountains. In summer it takes on a golden hue and I love it, I love the sense of clarity, openness and freedom I feel when we drive through it on our annual trip to the Snowy Mountains for some summer bushwalking.

Monaro Region, NSW

Not at its best, but you get the picture

As its main agricultural use is sheep and beef, I used to think, like many people, that its treelessness came from clearing for grazing and/or overgrazing, but in fact the first white people in the area found it in that state. The Austrian naturalist and artist, John Lhotsky described it in 1835:

The scene all around was composed of undulating downs, long projected hills among them, covered with very few trees.

Lhotsky, though, wasn’t the first white man to write about the region. In his book Discovering Monaro: A study of man’s impact on his environment, which is excerpted in Canberra’s centenary anthology, The invisible thread, historian Keith Hancock quotes English naval officer, Captain Mark John Currie. In 1823, Currie also saw, as Hancock describes it, “open, undulating, ‘downy’ country”. It was Currie who learnt the name of the region from the indigenous Australian inhabitants. He wrote:

Passed through a chain of clear downs to some very extensive ones, where we met a tribe of natives, who fled at our approach, never (as we learned afterwards) having seen Europeans before … by degrees we ultimately became good friends … From these natives we learned that the clear country before us was called Monaroo, which they described as very extensive …

Currie and his party, though, decided to call it Brisbane Downs after the Governor of the time. Hancock continues:

Mercifully, that new name did not stick. The white settlers, as they moved in, called the country Monaroo, Monera, Maneiro, Meneiro, Meneru, Miniera, Monera, and – in the fullness of time – Monaro.

What’s in a name, eh? One of the things I love about the region is, in fact, its names. The towns include Nimmitabel, Adaminaby, Bombala, Michelago; and the rivers include the Murrumbidgee and the Goodradigbee. I love how they roll off the tongue.

The Monaro is well represented in Australian literature. It is where  Miles Franklin was born and set some of her novels; the poet David Campbell was sometimes called “The man from the Monaro” and poet Judith Wright lived for many years in the region. Current authors associated with the region include Roger McDonald whose historical Miles Franklin Award winning novel, The ballad of Desmond Kale, is set in the region. When that book came out, he said

In my adult life I always wanted to live back in the country and I was able to do that from about 1980 onwards when I bought a farm in Braidwood [in the Monaro]. I’m never completely myself unless I’m in the Australian countryside. It’s my vocabulary of self somehow … I think it’s in all my books.

I rather know what he means. I live in a city, but its nickname is “the bush capital”. The countryside is never too far away – and I like it that way.

Back to Braidwood though. It seems to be a bit of a mecca for artists. This is where Judith Wright lived for many years, and it’s also where Julian Davies, author, potter and painter has lived for over three decades. He wrote about it Meanjin’s Canberra edition, which I reviewed earlier this year. In his piece, “Out of town”, he describes how he built his hut and established a semi-self-sufficient life there. “The irony” in this, he says, “is self-evident”:

the stubbon pursuit of a relatively isolated life has been an attempt to marry what might be irreconcilable: I moved to the forest because of exactly what it is, but tried to bring a level of comfort and civilisation with me.

If you’d like to know more about Braidwood, and its little corner of the Monaro, do read author Nigel Featherstone’s piece, “Naturally inspired”, in which he considers whether a place can be “creative”. Or read Irma Gold’s post on and interview with Roger McDonald for The invisible thread.

Finally, just in case I haven’t convinced you of the significance of the region, I should add that it has a car named after it, the rather dashing Holden Monaro!

Lit Blogs and Lit Students

/ Whispering Gums / 36 Comments

If you are a litblogger like me, have you come across actions or comments that suggest your blog is being used by students? What do you think about it?

I’ve noticed three specific behaviours that suggest student use:

  • outright questions in the comments, some specifically telling me that they are a student and can I help them, and some simply giving their student-status away by the style of question. I don’t know about you, but my response varies depending on the sort of question. Mostly, I try to refer them to other sources and encourage them to think for themselves, rather than telling them outright what I think the theme is or what a metaphor means. If commenters (who may or may not be students) engage in discussion, as in “I thought x meant y”, then I’d happily respond back. Otherwise, I try to be wary about pontificating!
  • searches reaching my blog that seem to clearly be an assignment or school question of some sort, such as what significance does “whitaker’s table of precedency” have in “the mark on the wall” or what literary devices are used in “the mark on the wall”? They seem like giveaways to me.
  • searches reaching my blog that I suspect are made by teachers searching for, well, plagiarism. These are the most bothersome ones. They are ones where someone has entered in a sentence or two verbatim from a blog post of mine, as in, recently: “Clearly, given the story Ariyoshi has told, she rather agrees  – or, at least, agrees for such societies as she depicts here in which women’s lot is not only an inferior one but works to discourage them from cooperating and supporting each other. The novel may be set in Japan, but the fundamental truths, unfortunately, are not so confined.”  That’s a pretty convoluted thing to type into a search engine, don’t you think? Is testing for plagiarism the only reason something like this would be entered as a search term? Or, am I being overly suspicious?

Have you experienced these? What do you think? Are you flattered? Bothered? I don’t mind students using my reviews if they cite them properly. It’s their risk if the teacher thinks my ideas are up-the-creek after all, but the plagiarism issue is another matter. In those cases, I wouldn’t mind not being cited (so much), if the teacher thought it was rubbish!

If you’re a litblogger, have you had similar experiences, and if so what you do think or what have you done about it? Or, are you are student or teacher? What do you think?