The Gippsland area of Victoria is a particularly rich one in terms of Australia’s literary history. It is also an area I’ve never visited before and so this week we decided to return home from Melbourne via the less common path, that is via Gippsland. Unfortunately our trip through the region was a quick one, with just one overnight stop at the pretty little fishing and tourist town of Lakes Entrance. It has whetted my appetite for a more leisurely exploration of the area in the future. Gippsland is a diverse region with plains, lakes, rivers, mountains and coastal landscapes – the sort-of “something for everyone” place that tourist guides like to promote.
Some of the authors commonly associated with Gippsland are Eve Langley, Mary Grant Bruce, Katharine Susannah Prichard and Hal Porter … Some were born there (such as Porter) and some visited there (such as Katharine Susannah Prichard), but all wrote about the region. The English writer, Anthony Trollope, also visited the area in 1872.
Eve Langley, whose novel The pea-pickers was the subject of one of my early posts, was particularly well known for extolling the virtues of Gippsland. In The pea-pickers, her two main characters travel through Gippsland – to places like Bairnsdale and Lakes Entrance – working as agricultural labourers. Steve, the main character, yearns to return to her family’s glory years as “princes” of Gippsland.
One of my favourite – though rather politically incorrect these days – childhood authors was Mary Grant Bruce. She set several of her lesser novels in the region and drew on her experiences there for her children’s series, The Billabong novels. My literary guide suggests that “the sense of escape and immersion in untouched nature” are evident in Bruce and Langley. While clearly there is more settlement now than there was in the early to mid twentieth century when these writers were writing, there are still many wild and natural spaces to enjoy in the Gippsland.
One discovery – and a rather embarrassing one for a person who prides herself on her knowledge of Australian geography – was that it is in Gippsland that the Snowy River, of Banjo Paterson fame, has its mouth. How did I not know that? Anyhow, I was pleased to see it at its quieter end!
Towering gum tree, Orbost
None of the region’s literary heritage was evident to the casual traveller – how I wish we celebrated our writers more. I will finish though with some lines from a poet of the region, Jennings Carmichael, as quoted in the guide under the entry for the town of Orbost:
Each soaring eucalyptus, lifted high,
The wandering wind receives;
I watch the great boughs drawn against the sky,
Laden with trembling leaves.
A soft harmonious music, full and rare,
Murmurs the boughs along–
The voice of Nature’s God is solemn there,
In the deep undersong.
Whispering Gums 