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 A
television series was shown recently on Australian television about
Ernest Shackleton’s Expedition to the South Pole in the early years of
the twentieth century. Shackleton wrote the account soon after the
expedition ended and the book, whilst popular at the time, has remained
in relative obscurity for over half a century. It, no doubt, became
popular reading again following the television series as viewers,
intrigued by the story, went back to the original source.
As with
Shackleton’s book, much of the early literature of Australia has
remained in relative obscurity. It might seem to be as “dry as old
bones” and there are certainly few people singing its praises in order
to convince people otherwise. There is, after all, no profit in
promoting books which are out of copyright, and there is such a mountain
of modern work which is promoted by publishers and reviewed in
newspapers and literary journals. With such a bewildering number of
books to choose from we, as consumers, are often more than willing to be
guided by a trusted reviewer towards the novels which we read. Or we
might choose the latest novel of a favourite author in the firm
knowledge that we won’t be disappointed with it. Such an author, of
course, already has “runs on the board.”
However,
not everybody adopts the “recommendation” method of choosing books.
Recently a newspaper carried a story of a reader who maintained that she
simply walked down the aisles of her local library once a week and chose
four books at random, from the shelves. She walked through a different
section each week — fiction, biography, history, it mattered not to her.
She reported that she could only read one book each week, but chose four
so that she could discard the “fizzers” and move on to the next one.
What courage! Oh, but what buried treasure she must unearth.
Many
years ago I purchased a “psycho-analytical” book titled Dibs, in
Search of Self by Virginia Axline. It was then, or has become, a
classic in the field of “play therapy”. However, I didn’t know that at
the time. I don’t know what attracted me to it and enticed me to pluck
it from the shelf in the bookstore, but it has remained one of my
all-time favourite non-fiction books. Over the years, I have given away
three or four copies to friends but have always managed to buy another.
I won’t be giving anything away here, in stating that the book its about
a small child who seems to be intellectually retarded. Ms Axline
interacts with him and it soon emerges that he is a genius with an IQ of
168. Of course that is not so important. More important is the sympathy
displayed by the therapist and the incredible courage shown by the
little boy in overcoming all of the problems unwittingly heaped upon him
by his parents. It has always haunted me that I may never have known
this beautiful book if I hadn’t stumbled upon it.
Only a
small number of “modern” works survive the test of time to become part
of the treasure-trove of literature; and those that do survive may not
have been best-sellers in their time. Geoffrey Dutton, in Australia’s
Greatest Books, set out to review approximately one hundred books,
only one per author, which form part of Australia’s literary heritage.
Not all were written by great stylists, but they were all instrumental
in helping form Australia’s literary heritage and all are worthwhile in
one way or another.
One of
Dutton’s selections is Jonah. This is a novel set in Sydney in
the early 1900s. Many of the places described — Chinatown and Paddy's
markets, Botany Road, Sydney Harbour and its foreshores — are icons of
Sydney. The characters — members of the “Push”, rags-to-riches
businessmen like Jonah, and battlers like Chook and Pinky — are just as
recognisable today. This novel has been described as the first great
novel about Sydney. It has been the subject of a television series and
has been adapted for the stage. Yet it is certainly not well-known by
the reading public in Australia.
Another
Dutton selection is The Complete Account of the Settlement at Port
Jackson. This was republished as 1788 to coincide with
Australia’s bi-centenary. Watkin Tench, who served as a marine on one of
the vessels of the First Fleet to arrive in Australia in 1788, provides
a first hand account of the voyage and then goes on to describe the
subsequent settlement in Sydney. He details the natural environment of
Port Jackson and its environs; the efforts to establish food production;
the exploratory trips into the hinterland; and, most interestingly, the
first interaction between Europeans and the Australian Aborigines. This
is a remarkable eye-witness account by a thoughtful, humane man who was
also a talented writer. Tench was interested in everyone and everything
around him. This work may be considered the first work of Australian
literature.
There is
a large body of early Australian writing which covers the journals
written by early explorers including Sturt, Giles, Leichhardt and
Carnegie. Dutton includes a number of these in his list, including
Sturt, who had this to say as he and his crew were swept down the Murray
River in a whaleboat: “I still retained a strong impression on my mind
that some change was at hand, and on this occasion, I was not
disappointed; but the view was one for which I was not altogether
prepared. We had, at length, arrived at the termination of the Murray.
Immediately below me was a beautiful lake, which appeared to be a
fitting reservoir for the noble stream that had led us to it; and which
was now ruffled by the breeze that swept over it.”
One of
my favourite books about Australia by an early writer is The
Adventures of Louis de Rougement. To quote a short passage: “Just
picture the scene for yourself. The weird, unexplored land stretches
away on every side, though one could not see much of it on account of
the grassy hillocks. I, a white man, was alone among the blacks in the
terrible land of “Never Never,” — as the Australians call their terra
incognita; and I was wrestling with a gigantic cannibal chief for
the possession of two delicately-reared English girls, who were in his
power.”
It never
happened. Louis de Rougemont was the assumed name of Swiss-born Louis
Grin. The Oxford Companion to English Literature describes him as
“an adventurer who decided at the age of sixteen to see the world. He
began as a footman to Fanny Kemble, touring through Europe and America,
and eventually became butler to the governor of Australia. After
spending many years there he contributed to Wilde World Magazine
in 1898 sensational articles relating to his extraordinary, mostly
bogus, voyages and adventures in search of pearls and gold, where he
encountered an octopus with tentacles 75 feet long and rode turtles in
the water.” It seems that, after great public excitement in the UK over
the stories, he was eventually rumbled when, in a passage of poetic
beauty, he described the wonderful “flight of the wombat.” This is a
very entertaining book of shipwreck, isolation and adventures with the
Australian aborigines, which I found, for the most part, quite
unputdownable. You just have to admire an author who can achieve that!
My
dictionary defines treasure-trove as “treasure found hidden
without evidence of ownership.” There really is a treasure-trove of
early Australian literature in libraries throughout Australia. Why not
skip down the aisles and grab a few titles. Taste them and discard the
ones that don’t appeal. Who knows what treasures you might unearth. What
is more, it won’t cost you a cent.
[ Col Choat runs the
Project Gutenberg of Australia site, where many of the books mentioned
above may be accessed as
etexts. ]
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