Book Review - To the Islands by Randolph Stow

 To the Islands by Randolph Stow

Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1975 (first published 1958)     ISBN 0140700013

There can be little doubt that Randolph Stow is in the top tier of Australian novelists. His works are in turn spiritual, allusive and wonderfully descriptive. Tourmaline is one of the best Australian books I have ever read, and The Merry-go-Round in the Sea is universally recognised as a great coming-of-age novel. To the Islands is another remarkable book, and it's astonishing he wrote a novel with such insight into aging and the approach of death when he himself was only in his mid-twenties.

(Before I go any further I'll mention that Stow heavily revised his novel for the 1982 re-publication: this review is of the first version of this book, published by Penguin in the 1970s.)

Stow quickly sets the scene in this book: a remote mission settlement in the north of Western Australia, where the long-serving superintendent Heriot has lost his faith in the ability of the government or the church to improve the conditions of the native inhabitants. We learn that he lost his wife and pregnant daughter over the years, believing his daughter was killed by her husband Rex. We learn in the first pages that Rex has just returned to the mission for the first time since Heriot's daughter's death.

When Heriot hears of Rex's return, his bitterness and anger overflows, and in a fit of anger confronts Rex during a cyclone and leaves believing he has killed him. He flees the mission during the storm, but is followed by one of the natives, Justin. Heriot had intended to commit suicide, which Justin's presence prevents, and so they journey through the country together. The journey, for Heriot is physical, mental and spiritual. He by turns strips away the layers of his personality, his grief and his anger. He is assisted in the process by Justin's presence - Justin's purity of spirit and focus on what is important in life help Heriot to move to a place of peace, where he no longer is angry with what has happened to him, or at the petty injustices that occurred during his life. At the end, by the sea, almost in sight of the Islands (the mythical Islands that the dead travel to in the native beliefs of the area), he is ready to pass on, acknowledging that "my soul is a strange country."

Interspersed with Heriot's journey is the story of the search for him undertaken by staff and natives from the mission. It turns out that Heriot's attack had not killed Rex, who joins the search, reflecting on what he has done wrong and hoping for a reconciliation, which does occur after a fashion.

To the Islands is many things, one of which is a foray into and an examination of the ethics of white colonialism in Australia. As the narrative develops, we learn that Heriot originally joined the mission to expiate the racial guilt he felt over not being able to forestall a massacre of the local black population which occurred in the 1920s. Heriot was the first of a new generation of whites that entered the black story at that time, determined to help Aborigines rather than kill them, even if that help was paternalistic and ineffective. Now, at the time described in the book, Heriot is the last man standing of that generation, and dealing with the ascent of the next generation: moving from paternalism to a more partnership-based relationship. The Aboriginals too, embodied in the character of Rex, are becoming more assertive in that relationship, beginning to demand to be heard, and to have agency in their own lives.

Heriot has spent so long and put so much into the mission that it has hollowed him out - he cannot connect with the new generation of white residents, but because of the approach the mission took with the natives he has no true and meaningful friendships with them either, even though Stow makes it clear during Heriot's journey that Justin, with his uncomplicated loyalty and love, could have been such a friend.

Stow captures and describes many things in this book - the tragedy of the circumstances of the native peoples, the experience of a man losing his reason to live and suffering a complete breakdown, the feeling of despair that comes when there is nothing to be done. The simple depth of this story is wonderful - I emphasise that Stow was only about 23 when he wrote this, which takes my breath away.

Stow's skills in descriptive writing are immense - this is a big story in a short book, with description of the physical world and the mental world within concise, but with a limpid clarity that makes you go back to try and work out how he did it.

This is a marvellous book. Highly recommended.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Frontier by Henry Reynolds

 Frontier: Aborigines, Settlers and Land by Henry Reynolds

Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1996 (first published 1987)       ISBN 1864481919

Henry Reynolds has been working in the field of Aboriginal History for a long time, and was a force in the push to gain recognition for Aboriginal land rights in Australia. His book The Other Side of the Frontier was one of the first histories to investigate interactions between Aboriginal Australians and the first settlers. Frontier, the book under review, is a look at not only the settlers view, but a dive into how it came to be that Aboriginal rights to land had (at the time of its publication) never been recognised here.

It's mainstream knowledge now that the colonization and settlement of Australia by the British came at the expense of the blood of Aboriginals, and that land was expropriated from them in the process. However, when Reynolds began publishing, the opinion held generally in the wider Australian polity was that Aboriginals didn't have a concept of land ownership, and that any loss of life was due to regrettable incidents of misunderstanding.

Reynolds clearly shows from the European perspective that the early settlers knew quite clearly that Aboriginals did have a concept of ownership of the land, and that they were prepared to fight for their right to continue to live on and utilise their tribal territories. Many of those early settlers and Government officials also knew that the settlers were in many cases killing the inhabitants of land they were taking up rather than acknowledging that it was they that were stealing.

Reynolds shows how notions such as the "noble savage" and "Social Darwinism" were used as a post facto justification of dispossession and murder. He also explains how the British idea that property was sacred under law and was seen as inalienably arrogated to the owner - totally counter to Aboriginal ideas - led to Aboriginals being sidelined in their own land.

Some people tried to ameliorate the situation, and indeed tried to ensure that the original inhabitants of Australia could have rights to access and continue to own the land that was theirs, but were stymied time and time again essentially by the land greed of the settlers.

What is surprising to the reader of this work in 2025 is that for a large period of White Australia's history much of this had been "forgotten" in the official narrative of settlement and colonization of the country. Reynolds shows that the concept of "terra nullius" was not ever espoused by the first settlers - in fact there was very little official documentation of land rights, and what little there was recognised Aboriginal rights to use land, at least for traditional activities. He points out that other colonial jurisdictions had worked through the implications of settlement in law, but Australia for many reasons never did.

Of course it was not long after this work was published that Australia finally did acknowledge the concept of continuing Native Title to land, and there has been much development in that area since.

This book is pretty easy to read - it is a polemic in some senses, but rooted in sources, although I found the way the notes were printed in this edition somewhat hard to follow. There is a good bibliography.

Many other historians have built on Reynold's legacy - while Frontier might have been seen as ground-breaking in its day, much of what is discussed in this book is now a commonplace of discussion in the history of this country.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - To Ayers Rock and Beyond by W.E. (Bill) Harney

 To Ayers Rock and Beyond by W.E. (Bill) Harney

London: Robert Hale Limited, 1963

If you are thinking of travelling to Uluru (Ayers Rock), it would be worthwhile to read this little book before you go. Written by Bill Harney, who by the time he wrote this was a well known author of books about Central Australia and Aboriginal life and lore, To Ayers Rock and Beyond is a book written about aspects of his time as the first appointed Ranger of the Ayers Rock-Mount Olga National Park. While the book talks about the antics of the early tourists to the park, and some of the problems of transport and so-on that came with opening up the area to tourists, the book is mostly about the Aboriginal story of the area.

While Harney had spent a lifetime in Northern Australia, until he was appointed Ranger he had never been to Uluru, and he was determined to find out as much as he could about the Aboriginals of the area, and their stories and traditions. Like many white northern bushmen, Harney had a deep respect for Aboriginal Australians and their way of life, and he soon was able to spend time with local men, in particular Minyinderri, a Loritdja (Luritja) man, who could describe for Harney the dreamtime stories to do with Uluru and its immediate surrounds.

Harney spends a few chapters of this book writing about the mythical meaning of many of the features of Uluru, which has much to do with fertility and the beginning of man in that area. He describes how Minyinderri and his tribesmen, who had been living at a Mission Station some distance from their traditional lands, took some time to re-aquaint themselves with the Rock, before beginning to sing to the country, allowing Harney to transcribe some of their chants and ask as to the meaning of what they were singing. As with much Aboriginal mythology, there are many layers of meaning in their chants and singing, and what Harney describes is, I'm sure, the version that is allowed to be told to non-initiates of the tribe.

The latter part of the book describes a journey made by Harney to the Petermann Ranges, where he not only traverses the spectacular country, but learns from Djuwerri some more about the mythology of the area. Djuwerri had not been on his home country for many years, and the raw emotion that overcame him when they arrived on country is well described by Harney.

As with many books written about Central Australia in the late 1950s and early 1960s, there is an inherent sadness at the passing of one phase of Aboriginal life in the Centre. Much has been destroyed by the white man, and yet Harney can rest in the knowledge that the culture is hanging on, and even rebuilding.

This is the first book of Harney's that I have read: I had in my mind that he was a mere teller-of-tales, but this book is much more than that. It is a celebration of Aboriginal culture, as much as a white man of his generation could write. It is also a reflection on the clash of cultures; of white and black; what was passing; and some musing on what was yet to come (Harney was concerned about the commercialization of the Rock in the 1950s - imagine if he could see it now!). I will finish this review by quoting the last few lines of this book - 

"To me he [Djuwerri] epitomized the Australian aborigine. People who  helped us freely in the past, yet because of their colour and nomadic way of life, were on the scrapheap in our social structure.

Yet Welfare is moving on. Obstacles are overcome slowly. The pressure is on from both sides. When the day comes that we understand them as they understand us I hope they will have it in their hearts to forgive us our trespasses against them."

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - My Country all gone the White Men have Stolen it by Fred Cahir

My Country all gone the White Men have Stolen it : the Invasion of Wadawurrung Country 1800-1870 by Fed Cahir

Ballarat: Australian History Matters, 2019            ISBN 9780646801780

This book is, as far as I know, the first attempt to provide a history (from the white man's point-of-view) of the contact between the colonial settlers of Victoria, and the members of the Wadawurrung tribe of Aboriginals, whose traditional lands ran from approximately Airey's Inlet to Learmonth, and east to Bacchus Marsh, including the areas now occupied by the cities and towns of Ballarat, Geelong, Ballan, Meredith, and Beaufort.

And a fascinating book it is. Cahir has searched through the archives to find reports of interactions with the Wadawurrung, from the earliest explorers, through to the height of the gold rush and after. The story is not a happy one for the Wadawurrung, nor for many of the white people who interacted with them, with dispossession and early death awaiting the Wadawurrung, and, depending on the person, guilt, anger or violence awaiting the whites.

The way any particular white person or family treated the Wadawurrung seemed to determine the way the Wadawurrung treated them. For squatters who aggressively kept them off their selections, the Wadawurrung may have responded with violence, but for those who understood that the land actually belonged to the Wadawurrung, and who treated them as fellow human beings, the partnership could be mutually beneficial - many Wadawurrung proved excellent pastoral workers, and the rations and care that those particular whites gave to the Wadawurrung helped them cope with the loss of their traditional hunting grounds, and the increasing scarcity of traditional food sources.

The other theme that runs through the extensive quotes from the primary sources that Cahir provides is that of cultural mis-communication, springing from the totally different social and legal frameworks that the Wadawurrung and the White (British) worked under. The Wadawurrung lived a traditional Aboriginal life of mutual obligation and kinship, and Cahir shows us through his quotations that they attempted to bring the early white settlers into this system, letting the settlers use the land, and offering assistance to them, but expecting reciprocity - that the settlers would give them food, clothing and equipment in exchange, and that they would give equally to the whole tribe. This idea clashed with the British concept that only those who "worked" got rewarded with "pay". Many correspondents Cahir quotes fail to understand why the Wadawurrung they interacted with were upset when only the men were given food if they had worked, rather than the whole clan.

The Wadawurrung did to some extent participate in the White economy, providing game for food, possum-skin rugs for warmth, and corroborees for entertainment. They soon moved beyond bartering to requiring to be paid cash for these items, although much work that they did on the stations was still for rations rather than money.

The discovery of gold changed Victoria hugely in a short time, and was not good for the Wadawurrung. By 1850, there was some kind of working arrangement between at least some of the squatters and the Wadawurrung, where the squatters provided food, and allowed some small depredation to their flocks, in the knowledge that the Wadawurrung could be called upon to help with herding and shearing. The Wadawurrung knew which squatters to avoid, and who were more friendly. The early violent interactions between Black and White - of which there had been a few - had ceased to occur in any way that could be considered a war over land. In fact there was beginning to be a push for the government to allocate land for Wadawurrung use, with the more enlightened settlers realising that they had stolen the land, and owed the Wadawurrung something more that they were being given.

After 1851, much of that was forgotten.  The influx of hundreds of thousands of gold-seekers in a very short time changed the face of Victoria forever. The towns that sprang up on the goldfields were dens of vice, which had a huge effect on Wadawurrung culture, and on the health of individual Wadawurrung people. It's fair to state that the moral and intellectual character of many of those on the goldfields was not high, and the mistreatment of the native inhabitants of the country was often appalling. The depredations that gold seeking made to the environment also took a heavy toll on the Wadawurrung, with many of their traditional camping grounds overtaken by prospectors.

The final destruction of any capacity to live in their traditional way, coupled with the temptations of alcohol and a sedentary life, had a deleterious effect on the Wadawurrung, with birthrates plummeting and death rates rising. From being an integral part of the country and economy of pastoral Victoria, the Wadawurrung became a quaint afterthought in goldrush Victoria. Cahir documents the continued lack of action from Government to assist the Wadawurrung to adapt and thrive in the new reality, despite advice from many whites on ways to help.

What is missing from this book, as Cahir notes in the introduction, is the unalloyed voice of the Wadawurrung themselves. Even when we "hear" them in the text, it is via their white interlocutors and reflected through the prejudices and proclivities of the writer, rather than being the true voice of the Wadawurrung. Cahir has skillfully dissected the white voices to try and get to some of the thoughts of the Wadawurrung, which I think is summed up in the title of the book. The British came, and took the Wadawurrung's land, and, from the quotations provided, Cahir shows that most of the settlers knew very well that they were taking land that belonged to someone else.

This is an important addition to the history of Aboriginal/White interaction in Victoria, and should be read by every person who lives on Wadawurrung land.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell

Book Review - The Water Dreamers by Michael Cathcart

The Water Dreamers : the remarkable history of our dry continent by Michael Cathcart

Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2009            ISBN 9781921520648

This is a book with a very interesting premise, which in some ways doesn't quite live up to the claim of the title, but is still well worth reading.

Much more and much less than a history of White Australia's interaction with water in Australia, Cathcart has also written about how the British (and others) took possession of the country through their imaginings of what it might be, and how those imaginings have been rebuffed by the country itself.

Starting with the arrival of the First Fleet, Cathcart shows how a people used to copious rain and riverflows struggled with the erratic nature of Australia's rainfall and water catchments. He delves further into the literature of early Australia than others have to show that some of the received knowledge  that we thought we knew about what early White Australia thought of water and the interior may not be actually what we think we know.

Apart from Sturt, most early explorers soon realised that there was no great river, lake or sea in the centre of the continent. This did not stop them from over-estimating the carrying capacity of the water that was available, encouraging pastoralists to venture too far inland, and destroying many watercourses in their search for reliable water.

Cathcart chronicles two differing schools of thought that developed regarding the "Dead Heart", or "Red Heart", depending on the view taken. The centre of Australia was either a place of despair and death with no possibility of permanent settlement, or a potential food bowl and living place for millions, after man's hand was run over the countryside to provide it with water.

Cathcart chronicles much of the work and literature of the "water boosters" as he calls them, including the strange "Lemurian" literature, a kind of pulp fiction that spoke of lost tribes and ancient seas around which the "Dead Heart" was once civilized. Ever one for facts rather than fantasy, he pops the bubbles of those who would generate a history of the continent through their words, rather than from the actuality of water, or lack of it. As he writes in his introduction his book "is an investigation that returns again and again to one overwhelming fact. In Australia, the success or failure of settlement has been largely determined by rainfall."

As still happens all too often in this country, those that talk sense, such as Griffith Taylor, were hounded until he left. Taylor's commentary, that much of Australia is too dry to settle in the way that politicians hoped to, still holds up today. Cathcart pricks the "populate or perish" bubble as well - why would the "teeming Asian hordes" want to take a desert country - they are hardly going to parachute into the Western Desert and invade from the inside out...

The book finishes with a short section on the current policy of trading water rights, which, as Cathcart points out, has its own problems as a vehicle to rehabilitate our depleted rivers and wetlands.

With copious footnotes and bibliography, The Water Dreamers is an interesting viewpoint of Australia's history, and worth reading.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Talking to my country by Stan Grant

Talking to my country by Stan Grant

Sydney: HarperCollins, 2016                           ISBN 9781460751978

Stan Grant is a well-known journalist and broadcaster, and he wrote this book as a cri de coeur to his fellow Australians, after the Adam Goodes controversy had taken place on Australian football fields.

As the son of a Wiradjuri man and a Kamilaroi woman, Stan understands only too well the rejection, confusion, and sadness that goes with growing up as an Australian Aboriginal. This book is his attempt to portray what that feels like, and how mainstream views of Aborigines affect his people.

He does this by telling us of his life - a life of constant movement through western New South Wales, his father working hard to keep food on the table, and the welfare away from his children. The way Aboriginal people have been, and still are, treated by their own country burns through these pages. Grant describes how his people, who had lived on their land for tens of thousands of years, are denied not only title to said land, but have had their whole lives taken away from them by white settlement.

This invasion (for that is how it is seen by Aboriginals) has left its mark on the people. Grant clearly shows how confusing it is to be an Aboriginal in Australia, where you are ignored, or vilified, or told to behave like "the rest of us", but when you try to do that you have your colour and heritage thrown back in your face. Grant acknowledges that in many ways he has been lucky, but the fear and confusion remained even as the physical trappings of his personal success increased.

Eventually Grant left Australia, to escape the expectation and degradation he experienced, to places where his Aboriginal heritage was not loaded with personal politics. At first he found it a release, but everything he experienced continued to burn and grow inside him until he broke under the strain.

He returned to Australia, and to his conflicted self. When back in his country, he can breathe deeply, and feel connected again to his people. The position of Aboriginals in society seemed to have changed while he was away, and yet... Grant explains well how, when the national anthem was played at the Sydney Olympics he found it impossible to sing along, as, for Aboriginal people the lyrics are almost a sick joke, and how, given what has happened to Aboriginals in the last 200 years, people like Adam Goodes can't " get over it" when racism yells in their faces at a football match.

This book is not a polemic aimed against white Australia. It is a heart-felt document of what it feels like to be Aboriginal in Australia, and the effect of racism and misguided policies on his people.

At the height of the Goodes controversy, Grant wrote an article that he reprints in this book, and which deserves quoting at length -

" But this is how Australia makes us feel. Estranged in the land of our ancestors, marooned by the tides of history on the fringes of one of the richest and demonstrably most peaceful, secure and cohesive nations on earth.

The 'wealth for toil' we praise in our anthem has remained out of our reach.....'Australians all let us rejoice' can ring hollow to us. Ours is more troubled patriotism. Our allegiance to Australia, our pride in this country undercut by the dark realities of our existence.....

From childhood I often cringed against my race. To be Aboriginal was to be ashamed....

We were ashamed of the bastardised wreckage of a culture that we clung to.....

And as I grew older I pieced together the truth that we didn't choose this. We are the detrius of the brutality of the Australian frontier.... "

I could go on, but it's probably best just to pick up the book and read it yourself. It's well-written, accessible and does not shy away from the hard questions. Grant would like to contribute to the long hard job of true reconciliation in Australia, and Talking to my country is a solid effort. Read and learn.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Lives by Peter Robb

Lives by Peter Robb

Melbourne: Black Inc., 2012                      ISBN 9781863955638


Those who have read my review of Midnight in Sicily will know that I rate Peter Robb very highly as a writer. The works of his that I've read have certainly weaved a web in my brain - they have been hard to forget, mainly due to Robb's limpid style, within which the reader is afloat on a sea of words, beautiful even when describing horror. Robb tends to write about ambiguous or mysterious situations, and it's clear that he is fascinated by things that fall through the cracks, or are not quite what they seem.

Lives is a collection of Robb's shorter non-fiction; as his thankyou note in the beginning of the book elaborates, most of these pieces made their first appearance in magazines and newspapers. Thankfully - for the most part - Robb's facile yet deep style is unaffected in a shorter format. The book is divided into three sections: Australia, Italy, and Elsewhere. While these groupings are obviously geographic, there is nothing really homogeneous in the lives that are investigated within these pages. Many of the pieces are to do with people working in the arts (actors, film-makers), some are book reviews, and some are reportage. Some articles give the reader a new view on a person they thought they might know fairly well, some introduce the reader to a person they'll want to know more about, and some give the reader the complete picture.

Interesting pieces for me in the Australian section were on Julian Assange: a double book review, but also a psychological insight into the man himself, an extended piece on Marcia Langton, and a wonderful combined travelogue, interview, political commentary and film discussion revolving around a road trip with Ivan Sen.

As you would expect, the section on Italy covers everything from the wonderful Baroque art in Rome to the machinations of the Mafia. These musings are covered in articles ostensibly about Robert Hughes' Rome, The Leopard, and articles about Fellini, Pasolini, and other less well-known figures in Italian art and law.

The Elsewhere section is even more eclectic, running from Joseph Conrad to Gary Gilmore; the Gilmore piece being a perceptive appraisal of Norman Mailer's work, and another reminder to me to add Executioner's Song to my to-read list.

Perhaps the piece I liked best was the one entitled Jilly, which consists of extracts from Robb's diary, mostly about the comings and goings within the block of units in which he lives. As with all Robb's work, it's hard to know what's real and what isn't, what is observed fact and what is imputation - an insight into an author who is always trying to look under the surface, and make connexions between people and events.

Well worth picking up and reading, even if only in part. Recommended.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Australia's last explorer: Ernest Giles by Geoffrey Dutton

Australia's last explorer: Ernest Giles by Geoffrey Dutton

Adelaide: Rigby, 1974                                                            ISBN 0851797091

(First published 1970 by Faber and Faber)

"Of all the great unexplored regions of the world, none subjected explorers to more consistent humiliation than Central and Western Australia. An area the size of the whole of Western Europe lured these fly-tormented men on from waterhole to water soak with promises of an inland sea, of great rivers, of plains where millions of sheep and cattle could run,but in most cases nothing more was achieved than a connection between existing settlements. Unlike North America, Australia was settled around its edges, a nibbling, heartless approach to living that has persisted to the present day. Most modern Australians have never been inland except as tourists, insulated from the shocks of dust and distance. The myth of the outback is the heart of the country's identity, while the citydwellers look outwards to the sea. There is no Chicago, Kansas City or Dallas in the middle of Australia, only a small town called Alice Springs, and five hundred miles in any direction much the same emptiness that engulfed the first explorers. West of Alice Springs, despite all the excitements of mineral discoveries, there is still a thousand miles of red emptiness."

So begins Australia's last explorer. From the first lines we know that, in the tale here written of the explorations of Giles, that we will be subjected to stories of heat, thirst, and bare survival, without the great pot of exploration gold of a great new discovery. As Giles wrote of his greatest journey, from the line of the Overland Telegraph to Perth and back, crossing the Nullabor Plain and both the Great Victoria and Gibson Deserts; "I have travelled during the expedition 2,500 miles, and unfortunately no areas of country available for settlement were found. The explorer does not make the country, he must take it as he finds it; and though to the discoverer of the finest regions the greatest applause is awarded, yet it should be borne in mind that the difficulties of travelling such a country cannot be nearly so great as those which confront the less fortunate traveller who finds himself surrounded by heartless deserts. Still, the successful penetration of such a region has its value, both in a commercial and scientific sense, as it points out to the future emigrant or settler those portions of our continent which he should most religiously shun."

This quote gives us some insight into the character of Ernest Giles - realistic in his appraisal of what he had achieved, at ease with what he had achieved, stoic, and an experienced bushman. Like many of our country's greatest explorers, Giles was English born, emigrating just before the great Victorian Gold Rush, which he joined without success. He ended up at Melbourne working for the Post Office, but city life was not for him, and he ended up working up and down the Darling River for various station owners, work that included looking for new grazing land. He became more and more interested in finding out what lay to the west of the great Overland Telegraph line, and having secured some funding from Baron Von Mueller, he set out on his first expedition in 1872, starting at Chambers Pillar in Central Australia.

This expedition traversed much of the Finke River, and came to grief when Giles tried to cross Lake Amadeus in an attempt to get to the Olgas, which he could see on the horizon. He was eventually driven back by lack of both water and the desire of his companions to continue.  He soon tried again, this time travelling south of Lake Amadeus. He was shattered to find that Forrest, who was the first to travel from West to East, had reached the Olgas before him and so Giles wasn't the first to set foot there. This second expedition almost brought his downfall, as he and one of his party, Gibson, ventured too far out into the desert that was to bear Gibson's name, Giles' horse died and Gibson got lost on the return and was never seen again - Giles barely made it back to base camp alive. The irony was that when he and Gibson decided to return to the base camp they were only 30 miles from permanent water that would have enabled them to continue West.

Still determined to get to the West, and to make a meaningful discovery, Giles re-equipped himself with Camels, and some new companions, and finally completed the epic trek to the coast of the Indian Ocean. He then marched back again. For his troubles, he got a rousing round of receptions in both Perth and Adelaide, but he never received the package of land that he so desired. He ended up in the Western Australian Goldfields - eventually dying in Coolgardie.

Dutton, mostly using Giles own books, the most famous of which is Australia twice traversed, not only describes the explorations, but delves into Giles' character - inclined to versify and see the best in a situation, he named many of his discoveries for classical characters or for whatever took his fancy at the time - Vale of Tempe, Glen Thirsty, Tarn of Auber and Champ de Mars give some idea of the turn of his mind. Given his classical education and seeming gentle nature, it seems odd that he had no fellow feeling for Aboriginal Australians, continually denigrating their artistic achievements and their degeneracy. He had several run-ins with local tribes, mostly after his camels had drunk the local water supply dry. While, like other explorers, he failed to have the wit to rely on Aboriginals to find food and water in places that he found barren, he is partly excused by the fact that many of the places he traversed were in fact avoided by the local inhabitants as wasteland. It's not made clear in his writings, but it seems that Giles killed several natives in the course of his explorations.

One thing that struck me particularly was how recent these explorations were - we tend to think of the ground-breaking journeys across our continent as happening in the dim reaches of the past, but Tietkens, Giles second-in-command for some of his expeditions, died in 1933, four years after the birth of my father-in-law and four years before the birth of my father....

Dutton has made a good job with this short book, taking the reader into the life-and-death trials of one of Australia's last, and perhaps forgotten, explorers. I for one will be following this up by reading Giles' own works.

I've mentioned in another review that Dutton was one of the founders of Sun Books: he was a poet in his own right, and a big man in the Australian literary scene of the 60s and 70s (this book is dedicated to Randolph Stow). This book was published by another great little imprint emanating from Australia in the 70s - Seal Books. Somewhat in the same vein as Sun, but more concerned with Australian history and folklore, it was yet another imprint that helped Australia find out more about itself. I've been lucky enough to inherit quite a little collection of these titles....there will be more reviewed on this blog as time moves on.

Recommended.


Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell

Book Review - The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin

The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin

London : The Folio Society, 2010.    (First published in 1987)

There is no doubt that Bruce Chatwin was a very interesting man, although the deeper one looks into his life the less interesting he seems to become. That he was a man in search of something there is no doubt, but as to what it was he was searching for, I'm not sure that in the end even he knew. We can count ourselves lucky that in his searching he found enough material and time to write some fine books.

His major opus was to be a book called The Nomadic alternative, which would encapsulate his theory that nomadism was the natural state of mankind, and it was the nomadic urge that had in fact led to the great civilizations. As Nicholas Shakespeare points out in the forward to this edition of The Songlines, that book never came to fruition, but some of the bones of it can be seen here.

In fact when The Songlines came out there was much confusion about the genre of the work - even now it can be seen nestling on library shelves at classification numbers for Australia, or native religion. Chatwin was always firm in describing the work as fiction: "the journey it describes is an invented journey". Chatwin did in fact spend nine weeks in Central Australia, and Arkady, one of the main protagonists, is based on a real person. Bruce himself is the narrator.

Chatwin has used Bruce's journey in The Songlines as a metaphorical hat on which to hang some of his theories of nomadism and human development. He sets the scene in Alice Springs, a town on the frontier of Black and White Australia, with its casual racism and collection of odd people drawn to the desert. It's Arkady's job to check that the proposed route of the Alice Springs to Darwin railway doesn't disturb any sacred sites. This is the vehicle for Bruce to travel through country learning what he can about Songlines.

Bruce is fascinated by the idea that these songs can allow those that know them to travel over what looks to be trackless wilderness with uncanny accuracy, while also being a Genesis story, and a tribal totem. In fact they are much more than that, and it's possible that no whitefella can ever really delve into all the meanings of one of these songs. Bruce makes no real attempt to go much beneath the surface of any of the songs - whether from respect, or that it is because it is the surface meaning that fits with his theories, is hard to say.

Through the device of a large dump of rain, Bruce is stranded at the (fictional) bush camp of Cullen for a couple of weeks, where he begins to organize his notebooks (Moleskine, as he points out in one of his asides that tend to paint him as a bit of a narcissist). It is here, about halfway through the book, that he begins to expound on his theories, via excerpts from his notebooks: quotes, vignettes from his previous journeys, and his own thinking.

Chatwin's theories build to suggest that the nomadic urge is ingrained into human nature, and that our violence was engendered to keep us safe from our natural predators, the big cats. His notebook entries are eclectic, erudite, and thoughtful, but - to this reader at least - smack a little of hope rather than reason. This section of the book does inspire thought, especially about the primeval beast: why does it appear in every culture, even here in Australia where there were never carnivores that were a threat to man? Why too do civilizations reduce - by words and deeds - their enemies to the status of beast, except to make them easier to kill? Why do we feel the need to do that?

Bruce intersperses his writings with vignettes of life in Cullen, which are mostly there to show that the "noble savage", if he ever existed at all, certainly doesn't exist today in the deserts of Australia - his description of going on a hunting expedition is by turns hilarious and depressing. Apart from an early chapter that describes Bruce's early knowledge of Australia, we know nothing about him, although he likes to find out all about those with whom he comes into contact. Bruce is a cypher, Arkady a crusader, and most other white Australians boorish racists or holier-than-thou do-gooders. Bruce remarks on the strength of the women he meets on his journey: something that I too have noted about Australian women. The Aboriginals are in many ways unknowable - Bruce wants to get into their worldview, but can't.

I first read this book not long after it came out, and came back to it hardly remembering a thing, other than I thought it a deep work at the time. Thirty-odd years have passed, and this book no longer seems to have the gravitas I thought it had, or indeed perhaps that Chatwin sought to give it, and sections seem contrived (how anyone thought this was anything other than a work of fiction is beyond me now). However, it contains some thought-provoking ideas wrapped up in a good story, and is still worth reading, as just that.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Singing Saltwater Country

Singing saltwater country : journey to the songlines of Carpentaria by John Bradley with Yanyuwa families.

Published in 2010 by Allen & Unwin  ISBN 9781742372419

In 1980, John Bradley went to town of Borroloola in the Gulf country as a teacher. I imagine he had little inkling of what that decision would mean for the rest of his life, and that this book would come thirty years later. We find little in the book of John Bradley's life before he arrived, and of why he decided to go there in the first place, and it is to the benefit of the book as a whole that we don't.

What we do gain, through Bradley's experiences, are insights into the songlines, or kujika of the Yanyuwa people. Bradley's is the first book I have read that manages to explain to Western minds what songlines are, and their purpose.

John Bradley turned up at Borroloola at a time when the old men of the Yanyuwa had come the the realization that they were the last of their line who knew all (or most) of the kujika of their people. The younger men had moved away for work, or were not interested in learning songs that seemed to have little relevance to their current way of life. Bradley, with his interest in Aboriginal culture and tape recorder, was soon seen as a way for the Yanyuwa to preserve their kujika, and to perhaps gain some legitimacy in the white world - there is a moving piece in the book when Bradley, after having written down a kujika, finds his Aboriginal friends very excited that their Law was now written down just like the White Man's.

Bradley has cleverly constructed the work as a tour through several kujika, with each chapter talking about a particular kujika, as well as opening up other subjects, such as land rights, and the tragic early death of many Aboriginals in outback Australia.

Of course, the most important subject of the book are the songlines themselves. Bradley struggles throughout the work to give what he feels is an adequate explanation of just what a kujika is. Having read Bruce Chatwin, and some other works, I had an understanding that the songs were a way of Aboriginals finding their way across country. Bradley shows us that it is much, much more. While description of country is one purpose of the kujika, they are also stories of the dreamtime, stories of real ancestors, stories of family, and ultimately stories that come out of the earth itself. Bradley is at pains to explain that the Yanyuwa believe that the kujika exist within the earth itself, so even if no-one is singing them, they still give the land it's life. They are, for the Yanyuwa, their epic poetry, their religious text, their family tree, and, in a sense, their creation.

Bradley points out that it is, in the end, impossible to truly explain just how important the kujika is for the Yanyuwa, because a knowledge of the Yanyuwa language is indispensable for the true meaning to be conveyed. By the end of his journey as it is portrayed in this book (2008), there are only five speakers of Yanyuwa left alive, and Bradley is one of them.

Because Bradley has been accepted into the Yanyuwa people - and being a man - he is one of the very few white people who has been able to attend and understand many of the ceremonies of the Yanyuwa. He makes the point that the sacred and secret kujika can have the same lyrics as one that is publicly known, but with a different melody, or with some different verses interspersed between what is publicly known. Indeed sometimes the words and the melody are the same, but the words themselves can have more than one meaning, and only the initiated can know the sacred meanings of the words in question.

There are two fascinating aspects to this book for someone brought up in the white world. One is of course the kujika themselves, what they are and the role they play in Yanyuwa society, and the other is just how recently the traditional Aboriginal life in the Gulf has passed away. The old men Bradley talks to in the 'eighties remember their childhoods as ones of tradition and law, not living in town camps or working for the stockmen. We can sometimes think the destruction of the Aboriginal way of life happened long ago, but Bradley puts the lie to that.

This book is in fact a description of a part of history that is no more - the old men were right, the kujika are slowly disappearing from the country, as the old men and women die. Bradley has managed to capture many of the kujika before that happened, and is trying to re-introduce them to the young Yanyuwa people. I hope he succeeds.

If you are at all interested in the history of this country, or Aboriginal life, you should read this book. 

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell