The first half of the twentieth century saw few novels written about Brisbane, or even Queensland. Three historical novels stand out in this period. The Romance of Runnibede by Steele Rudd aka Arthur Davis was published in 1927. Set on the Darling Downs in the mid-nineteenth century, the book narrates the lives of squatters and the Aboriginal resistance to the white presence, but there is no mention of Brisbane. Brian Penton’s Landtakers, the Story of an Epoch, published in 1934, also explores squatter life and the treatment of the Aboriginal people from the 1840s to the 1860s. Landtakers relates the life of Derek Cabell, a young English immigrant who arrives in Moreton Bay in 1844. Penton describes Brisbane:

Red earth and blue sky met in the jagged line of a near horizon. In the middle of this vault stood the settlement—a prison within a prison. Shanties built of black bark twisted by the fierce sun, with crazy-shaped doors and glassless windows. Jail and barracks of stone. A yellow stone windmill. A long, dusty, empty street. Sheep, a few cows, pigs, wide patches of yellow Indian corn. At one side of the valley a river shimmered in the sunlight; at each end of the valley the bush. Into illimitable blue distance it faded, across unexplored mountains and plains, grey, motionless and silent.

Here Penton evokes a sense of isolation in a vaguely intimidating landscape from which there is no escape from the “prison within a prison.”

Penton has played with history, as he describes convicts in chains and other aspects of the penal settlement. However, Brisbane was no longer a penal institution in 1844 as the prison was closed down in 1842. Only the first chapter of Landtakers is set in Brisbane, where Cabell’s anger at the loss of some sheep boils over in a bar. His opinion of the land was echoed by many of the first settlers: “’I hate it,’ he said pathetically. ‘I loathe it. It’s so different from England, this eternal, cursed, colourless bush.’” Perhaps this myth of a hostile country is also partly responsible for later depictions in literature of the inhabitants of Brisbane, like Praed, wanting to escape to a better life in Europe.

In Landtakers, Cabell is bitter about his situation and prospects for the future, and blames the land for his failures. Two years after his arrival, he drives a mob of sheep and cattle 600 kilometres northwest of Brisbane where he establishes a huge holding. Over the years, Cabell commits atrocities including the massacre of Aboriginal people. Landtakers provides an unabridged view of life on the Queensland frontier and an image of the pioneer as an anti-hero. The role that landscape plays in shaping how we perceive a work cannot be underestimated. Landtakers, in the words of David Carter,

shows a landscape that is almost gothic, that sometimes seems positively malevolent in its own right not merely the scene for malevolent human action. Imagining Queensland as a place of gothic haunting, guilty secrets, sexual repression, and violence—the other side of paradise—is a surprisingly strong theme in literature.

Inheritors (1936), the sequel to Landtakers, evokes this idea of guilt and suppression as it takes aim at the political corruption in Queensland and portrays Brisbane towards the end of the nineteenth century as being obsessed with hiding its not so glorious past of deceit and lies.

It was not until the mid-twentieth century and Vance Palmer’s Golconda (1948), the first of a trilogy partially set in Brisbane that some form of continuity in using the city as a setting developed. The three novels, including Seedtime (1957) and The Big Fellow (1959), are loosely based on the life of Ted Theodore, a Queensland politician, and span the period from the late 1920s to the 1950s. The main protagonist, Macy Donovan, starts out as a union organiser in the new mining town of Golconda in outback Queensland and later rises to become premier of the state. It is not until Seedtime that Palmer gives life to Brisbane with some parts being shown in more detail. In the following passage from Seedtime, Donovan has just left hospital after recovering from a knifing:

A sense of exultation was making Donovan feel light-headed as he left the hospital behind him and sauntered down towards the North Quay. Morning showers had washed the streets clean and a cool, bright wind was moving in from the Bay; there was even the tang of the sea in it. Winding through the massed spread of buildings in the city below, the river showed in streaks of silver and where it widened into a broad reach along the Quay the dark blobs of small cargo-boats could be seen like moving water-beetles through the bamboos of the Esplanade.

Here Palmer uses the rain, the smell of the sea, and the river to evoke a sense of well-being in the city.

In the next instalment, I look at David Malouf’s Johnno and Jessica Anderson’s The Commandant, amongst others, continuing the theme of Brisbane as a place to escape from.

As I have written elsewhere, knowing the country used for the setting of a novel through personal experience is of immense value to an author. In my present work, a sequel to Turrwan, I needed a secluded hideaway for the villains and realised that the property I had lived on for seven years was perfect as a starting point. The following is a piece I wrote for a university course and which I have subsequently adapted and used in the first draft of the novel.

Just 30 km from the centre of Brisbane, Cedar Creek winds its way to flatter lands after cascading down through the rain-forested slopes of Mt Glorious. The gorge opens out onto a secluded valley surrounded on all sides by mountains (Glorious, D’Aguilar, Samson, Lawson). The creek clings tightly to the flanks of Mt Glorious on one side while the northern side opens to more gently undulating lands before rising steeply to the rock escarpments south of Mt Samson. Away from the creek the trees have been cleared and kikuyu grass planted for dairy cattle. The verdant meadows laze peacefully in the sun, while contented cattle chew their cud in the shade of the bushy wattles that hedge the fields before tallowwoods and blue gums take over, lining the gullies and ridges with hues of green. Huge megalithic granite boulders hide amongst the vines, and further up the slopes lantana lurks in the shadows, impenetrable.

This special place was my home for seven years. Like a bowl, it collects the summer rains that fall on the mountains and is therefore greener than lower areas. The mountains also cast wide shadows across the valley keeping temperatures a few degrees cooler than Brisbane. You can feel a sense of protection in a womb-like embrace, the power of the place is almost tangible, you can taste it in the twinkling pool, smell it in the yellow wattle, you hear it in the screech of the white cockatoos and the busy chattering of multi-coloured parrots. When it rains the clouds blanket the landscape, so close you can almost touch them as the mists rise with the heat.

The creek is named for the magnificent red cedars (Toona australis) that once abounded. Unfortunately, many fell victim to the demand for the quality timber much appreciated by furniture makers. An old disused sawmill, nestled beside the creek where it first enters the valley, remains as a witness to their passing. The red cedar is one of the few native Australian species that lose their leaves in winter. The vigorous growth of spring-green leaves are a delight to behold, you can almost feel the life force pulsing within.

Cedar Creek is a measure of the climate and the physical features of the area. One year it never stopped raining – the earth was literally weeping, spilling giant tears into the creek. The locals say it used to flood just about every year, and it certainly never stopped running for months on end as is the case these days. Rare are the times now that you hear the boulders rumbling and crunching in the roar of the flood that can drown the unwary in the turbulent, mud-brown flow. In a tragic accident not long after we moved to the valley, a 14 year old girl trying to save her dog fell into the swiftly flowing waters and drowned. I remember an earlier time helping our kids across the same causeway with the help of a rope. The power of the water was incredible.

Over time the creek has carved its way down to a rocky bottom with deep holes, waterfalls and rapids alternating along its length. The water is always cool and refreshing in the heavy summer heat, and the creek is a popular picnic spot. Shady trees cling precariously to whatever their roots can find and somehow resist the regular pounding of the flood; at their feet, reeds and grasses grow amongst the sand and stones. Light filters through the overhead branches and dances in the bubbling cascades. And if you’re quiet at dawn or dusk you may be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the shy platypus. Tiny fish dart in the shadow of a sunken log while the cicadas thrum, ever present in the background.

As with elsewhere, the inevitable development came with its roads, fences and houses popping up on the landscape. Now the noises of the surrounding bush are often pierced by a passing car or the iconic mower as progress enters the valley. The property I lived on has now been carved up into two hectare lots and is no longer recognisable as a dairy farm. I have since moved further down the creek (outside the bowl) to a house on a hill overlooking the valley. My connection to the creek is still strong, albeit different. I don’t spend as much time actually in the creek or along its banks as before. I suppose it’s because the kids have grown up – they were always wanting to go for a swim, so I had to go with them – and where I now live the creek is less accessible.

Cedar Creek has been a part of my life for the last 18 years. Even if I move away from this area, it will always remain as the defining element of those years. I count myself lucky to have had this opportunity to get to know such a beautiful area.

The straps of my backpack dug hard into my shoulders as I trudged zombie-like in the sweltering heat. I was hitch-hiking across the island of Crete and had been dropped off in a small village miles from anywhere. A number of houses and sheds nestled beside the main road, but motorists hardly seemed to notice their presence as they rushed by in a cloud of dust and roaring motor without a sideways glance. I walked to the outskirts until I found a spot on the road where cars could pull over, and dropped my load to the ground with a sigh of relief. A low stone wall and a few sparse shrubs provided the only shade, but it would have to do because my legs felt like jelly and refused to go any further.After several hours under the relentless sun, I was beginning to wilt and thought I’d never get out of the place. It was slow going trying to get a lift in Crete as there were few cars. And those that did come, hurtled past me, unstoppable express trains. The village seemed to be asleep, the population swallowed by the imposing stone walls of their houses, the only sound the constant thrumming of countless cicadas.

A movement in the shimmering air caught my eye. Coming down the street from the centre of the village was a woman, clothed in black from head to toe. She was middle-aged, the olive skin of her face bore the marks of the elements and the passing of time. She was carrying something in her hands, maybe a tray I thought, covered by a spotless white cloth.

Imagine my surprise when she came directly up to me and offered the tray accompanied by a torrent of incomprehensible Greek. I had no idea what she wanted until she lifted the cloth to reveal a loaf of freshly-baked bread, whose rich aroma filled my senses, evoking the image of my uncle’s bakery and the smell I adored as a child, of loaves direct from the oven. A block of Fetta cheese, tomatoes, olives and a bottle of orange juice decorated the tray. I was flabbergasted. As I took the tray I tried to thank her with my few words of Greek, but she waved me away, turned on her heel and headed back the way she had come. Still in a daze, I sat down to my feast, famished. I unfolded my knife and cut the bread. Food had never tasted so good.

I was deeply touched by the generosity of this unknown woman who had gone out of her way to be kind to a passing foreigner, especially so in my case as I had long hair, a bushy beard and dusty clothes. More than 30 years after the event, I still recall this moment of kindness with great humility and endless thanks. To know there are selfless people in our troubled world kindles joy and hope for the future.

While the colonial history of Australia has been widely represented in fiction, from Marcus Clarke’s classic For the Term of His Natural Life, first published in 1870, to Kate Grenville’s The Secret River (2006), Brisbane has been largely neglected.

The first Queensland novel, Fern Vale, or the Queensland Squatter, by Colin Munro, was published in 1862. Set for the most part on the Darling Downs in the years before separation in 1859, the book is a pastoral romance which describes the social interactions between squatters, and the treatment of the Aboriginal people. At one stage, one of the characters passes through Brisbane, but nothing is said of the settlement. It was not until 1881 and the publication of Politics and Passion, by Rosa Praed, that Brisbane appeared in fiction. Although Praed’s book is only partially set in Brisbane, it is important because it is the first novel to make reference to the city at any length. Politics and Passion is the first of 16 books set in ‘Leichardt’s Land,’ which represents Queensland after it became a separate colony in 1859. The author describes Brisbane as follows:

Leichardt’s Town is curiously situated upon three peninsulas, lying parallel with each other, and formed by the snake-like curves of the river which divides them. The city lies in the middle, and is called the north side in contradistinction to South Leichardt’s Town, with which it is connected by a bridge, while Emu Point, the suburb where Mrs. Vallancy lived, faces it again on the opposite bank.

Praed, who was born and grew up in Queensland, explores life on the frontier, squatters, politics and relations between black and white in the expanding state. Growing up, Praed’s ambition was to escape and go to Britain, a theme later explored by David Malouf and others in writing about Brisbane.

Only a handful of novels with Brisbane as the principal setting were written before the end of the nineteenth century. According to the John Oxley Library (JOL) website, The Curse and its Cure (1894), by Thomas Pennington Lucas was the first novel to be set in Brisbane. In the first volume, The Ruins of Brisbane in the Year 2000, a man sailing up the Brisbane River in the early twenty-first century tells the story of the city’s decay. The narrator describes a civil war between Queensland and the other states, the massacre of the Aboriginal people, the 1893 floods, and the ‘curse’ that leads to Brisbane’s downfall—the selfishness and greed of the people. Volume two, Brisbane Rebuilt in the Year 2200, describes how ‘the city is rebuilt with love and transformed into a Christian utopia of peace, prosperity and good health’ (JOL).

However, I believe that another work of fiction set in Brisbane predated The Curse and its Cure. In 1888, William Lane published White or Yellow? A Story of the Race-war of A.D. 1908, a work of speculative fiction, in serial form in the Boomerang. In the novel the Chinese take over the parliament in Brisbane in 1908, but are eventually expelled by an uprising of the white population. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Lane was an influential figure in Queensland political and literary circles. His work reflects the ‘repressed violence’ and the ‘pathological national need’ in Australia’s search for identity. In White or Yellow?, John Saxby, one of the leaders of the white revolution to expel the Chinese, proposes a solution to the problem, which is adopted by all and implemented:

‘Let us strike while the iron is hot and before they are ready. Let
us terrorize them so that they will never recover. Let us convince
them that we are desperate and that their only chance is to obey.
We can fire Chinatown. . . . We can burn down every Chinese
store and house and plough up every Chinese garden. We can
hang every white man who is a traitor to the whites in this war.
And we can start to do this throughout Queensland, perhaps
throughout Australia, this very night.’
‘And the Chinese themselves?’ queried Dow, while the other committeemen leaned to listen breathlessly.

This genre of narrative found its roots in public paranoia and contributed to a fear of being invaded that can still be felt in the present. Perhaps White or Yellow? has been forgotten and not recognised as the first novel to be set in Brisbane because it appeared as a serial, and even more so because it was an obviously racist invasion story.

Another candidate for the first novel set in Brisbane could have been The Land and the People published by W. Edward Graham under the pseudonym Austin South in 1891. However, only two chapters of a work in the vein of Lucas’s futuristic utopian Brisbane were published and it is not known if Graham ever finished the novel. The next novel to be set in Brisbane was The Dishonourable (1895), a popular courtroom drama and murder-mystery/romance that takes place during the devastating flood of 1893. Its author, John David Hennessey, explores the corruption that was rife in the worlds of politics and business in the city at that time.

In a future post I will look at other authors who have written about Brisbane including Brian Penton, David Malouf and Jessica Anderson among others.

Schoolhouse

The Toyota Hilux bumped its way along the dirt track that leads to Lakruja Village on the island of Espiritu Santo in Vanuatu. We were a group of twelve from Brisbane, en route to visit the French school in the remote village. We had set out from where we were staying in the Village de Santo Resort on the outskirts of Luganville, the only major town on the island, in two vehicles, the ubiquitous pick-ups where passengers ride in the open back tray. Many in the group are not as young as we used to be, and it was a struggle for some to heave themselves over the side. On the way to the village we crossed one of the four airports built by the Americans during World War Two. The blue/black macadam was barely visible under the invading canopy of regrowth that was reclaiming the land.

We passed the occasional native hut ensconced in the forest. In parts, wide expanses of large-leafed macaranga draped in vines formed impenetrable walls on either side of the track. The sky was grey, but the rain held off. In early August, the air was heavy with humidity and the smell of raw vegetation and wet earth, while the temperature sat in the comfortable mid-twenty degrees Celsius range. More evidence of habitation became visible, we passed a tiny yellow concrete building which announced itself in bold letters as the shop. Everybody was relieved when we pulled to the side of the road and stopped. A timber-framed shelter stood in the large cleared area directly to the left; further along was a building we presumed to be the school. A number of adults were herding children dressed in uniforms of yellow shirts and green or red shorts/skirts into some semblance of order, their huge eyes fascinated by the sight of a motley crew of whites emerging from the vehicles. Sore backsides were rubbed, muscles stretched, necks un-kinked.

The school we were visiting had been going for a year and had 41 students enrolled in Kindergarten and Year 1. The project is being financed by the Millennium Cave Tours run by the villagers. “Education is far from free in Vanuatu and the cost is prohibitive for children in the outlying villages where the people grow fruit, vegetables, chickens and pigs to survive, and have little in the way of money,” our guide Sam Andikar explained. However, the villagers are recognising the necessity of education if they are to be part of the world they see changing around them.

Our trip had been organised by Bev Anti from the Resort, and Sam, director of the cave tours. Rose and I had been in Vanuatu the year before, and the idea of bringing a group of Rose’s French students to the island took root. So here we were, students – two with their husbands in tow, a friend and ourselves, waiting by the roadside to be greeted by the pupils, their teachers and the chief of the village. Finally, all was ready. “We can go in, now,” said Sam, ushering us across the track. We advanced one by one and the children draped colourful leis of native plants around our necks. We placed the gifts we had brought with us on a table in the open and were served green coconuts with a straw to drink the delicious and refreshing milk. Sam introduced us to the villagers and the chief, who welcomed us to the village. “Put your hands on the donations,” Sam told us. “It is part of the custom when giving or receiving gifts that both parties do so.” We nudged forward with the two lady teachers, Madam Irene and Madam Germaine, and stretched out to touch the books, dictionary, scissors, crayons, paint brushes, rubbers and various other items including a small laptop computer we had brought along. “The village has a generator, so they will be able to use the computer,” Sam assured us.

After the presentation we proceeded into the school hut which was set up with small tables, each surrounded by four chairs on the concrete floor and a black board at the front. White pages covered in coloured words decorated the walls. The hut was about eight metres long by five metres wide and was built in the traditional way from bamboo with thatched roof and walls. One of the women from the village had earlier demonstrated how palm leaves were threaded together to form an impermeable layer. The inspection over, we moved outside where we were offered fresh coconut meat.

A short time later we were invited into another building behind the school. We were led to chairs at the front facing back towards rows of benches filled with the children, and adults behind them near the door. The children sang songs in French and Bislama and our group responded with a few songs in French led by Rose. We also sang “Waltzing Matilda,” which I was obliged to translate into French. The villagers sang the Vanuatu national anthem and then lunch was served. It consisted of an entrée of paw paw, a local variety of apple, cucumber and grilled corn on the cob, followed by a Boonya, a traditional dish wrapped in leaves and cooked in a fire in the ground. Rose, Jan and the teachers held the food bundle between them to mark the sharing of the meal. Two ladies unwrapped the leaves to reveal large violet chunks of taro, orange sweet potatoes, cabbage leaves, jellified cassava and chicken. A huge tub of rice was placed on the table. The children sang as they watched us eat and it wasn’t until we had finished that they were allowed outside where they were fed from cooking pots in the shade of a large tree in the centre of the ground. Some of the adults shared the leftovers in the school. The school ground had once been part of an American military base, but the villagers had had to clear the jungle that had buried it. Among the many stumps that remained sat rusted crumbling bundles of barbed wire left by the Americans.

After copious goodbyes, we climbed back aboard the vehicles and continued a few kilometres along the track to another village. Here we were shown into a small hut that served as a preschool and met Madam Rolando, the teacher. The room was much humbler than the one we had just seen. The children sat on woven mats on the uneven earth floor and resources were virtually non-existent. Once outside, Jim engaged the kids in a game of soccer – it was something to see the smiles on their faces.

This experience was an eye-opener for many in the group. Here in Australia we take education for granted, yet still rail at the cost of uniforms and books. We never question our right to a school, teachers and resources. In Vanuatu, education is reserved for those with money, which means for most, having a regular, paid job. However, eighty percent of Ni-Vanuatans rely on subsistence farming and there is insufficient money to send kids to school. This initiative by the villagers to create their own school, and therefore a better future for their children, needs support. Our support, to help make it happen.

http://millenniumcavetour.weebly.com/millennium-cave-foundation.html

What exactly is a historical novel? Much has been said about the subject: some say it has to be at least 50 years in the past, others that it must happen before the author’s lifetime, and others again say that any story set in the past, no matter how long ago, is historical fiction. From my own research I have developed the following definition:A historical novel should be set in a time beyond the direct experience of the author and the majority of readers. It is only through a distant perspective of the past and the consequent objectivity, or awareness of difference that this allows, that a work can be called a historical novel. The historical novel’s retrospective nature, that bridges two separate periods in time, and the difficulty found in consulting archives, set it apart from contemporary novels written from personal imagination, experience or memory. Critics are united in their view that to be authentic, historical fiction must also be based on genuine research and accurately depict the period it is set in, within the confines of the known historical record. Stories that do not engage a definite historical content/context are not historical novels. The historical novel is a hybrid with the tension between fact and fiction creating historical awareness in the reader through actively engaging with unfamiliar themes, ideas and settings in an ongoing process. Historical fiction educates us about people and places of the past, their lives, their struggles and their customs. What we learn through reading about the past can lead to a reassessment of our present values and our place in society because they are cast in light of a different social context.

Some readers of Turrwan have said that I have left them dangling and they are waiting for more. What happened in the years between Grayson’s death in the 1860s to Tom’s own death in 1910? they ask. They want to know more about Elizabeth and her life at Murrumba. I had already nurtured the idea of writing about Tom’s daughter, Constance and her role in producing Tom Petrie’s Reminiscences of Early Queensland. So I have started/continued my research into the Petrie family and am attempting to develop some sort of a plot line. Tom and Elizabeth married in 1858 and had six daughters and three sons, who all grew up at Murrumba. In the 1860s the Petrie’s bred cattle and horses and also ran the coach stop and provided accommodation and meals for travellers between Brisbane and Gympie, where gold was discovered in 1867.

Constance Campbell Petrie

A primary school opened in North Pine in 1874 and the railway arrived in 1888. Tom was involved with establishing a settlement for the Aboriginal People on Bribie Island and played an important role in dealing out justice in the growing town of North Petrie. The family endured economic hardship through the 1890s’ depression, which was exacerbated by severe drought. Constance collaborated with her father to produce Reminiscences, a process I will explore further in this new work. After his death, the town’s name was changed from North Pine to Petrie in honour of Tom. However, not all the locals were impressed, and voiced their opposition, to which Constance was forced to respond.

As with Turrwan, I need a villain. I am looking at creating a family who move to North Pine in the 1860s and who run foul of Tom. Perhaps they are thieves or have connections to bushrangers. Over the years, the resentment grows and is passed on to later generations. It is this family that Constance has to fight in defence of her father and the family name. Or it could be a rival family of graziers . . . or both.

For the Australian Aboriginal people there is no separation between nature and humanity, as I explain in the Foreword to Turrwan. We construct our landscapes from a cultural perspective, they become a reflection of who we are as a society and how we have integrated with them over time. The white colonisers of Australia discovered a landscape sculpted in many areas by the Aboriginal inhabitants to make the country more productive. The Aboriginal people knew the land intimately; everything in their world has a story. In anthropologist Deborah Bird Rose’s words:

Here on this continent, there is no place where the feet of Aboriginal humanity have not preceded those of the settler. Nor is there any place where the country was not once fashioned and kept productive by Aboriginal people’s land management practices. There is no place without a history; there is no place that has not been imaginatively grasped through song, dance and design, no place where traditional owners cannot see the imprint of sacred creation.

In Turrwan I have attempted to provide some sense of this connection through, for example, the stories “The Beginning of Life” and “Mirrabooka,” and the kippa-making ceremony. Otherwise, my descriptions of the Brisbane area are the result of research and personal experience. I set out to capture some of the essence of Australia through descriptions of wildlife, flora and the weather, without overly resorting to metaphor as it is Tom telling the story and I did not want to make him over-poetic.

In my view, getting the setting right by producing a credible portrait of the environment and all that existed in the area at the time in question is crucial for a work of historical fiction, so writing a novel set in the region where you live has distinct advantages. I have lived on the banks of Cedar Creek, 30 km to the north-west of Brisbane city centre, for the last 17 years and have come to know the landscape, climate, flora and fauna of the region well. Although I first visited Brisbane more than 40 years ago—I was born and raised on the Atherton Tablelands in North Queensland and also lived and worked in Central Queensland as a teenager—it has only been in recent times that I have become familiar with its geography and history. The fact that I have extensively explored the city and surrounds on foot, by car, bus, train and boat has helped me recreate the terrain as it once must have been before the steel and glass structures that now dominate the skyline came into being.

Old maps, drawings, photographs and descriptions were invaluable in helping me create a picture in my mind of the area as it was nearly 200 years ago, while modern technology in the form of Google Earth also helped. The old windmill on the hill at Wickham Terrace and the commissariat store snuggled into the riverbank on Queen’s Wharf Rd are all that are left from those early times and served as critical landmarks in my understanding of the layout of Brisbane and as indicators allowing me to imagine how the area once looked. When I visited the windmill I was reminded of a passage in Kate Grenville’s Searching for the Secret River (2006) when she was in London tracing her relative Wiseman’s path: “I laid the palm of my hand on the rough limestone, feeling the cold grit on my skin. His hand might have lain there too, leaving molecules behind, wedged in the grain of the stone, as he leaned on it talking to someone, or . . . what?” (50). I touched the smooth, conical wall of the mill and imagined the machinery grinding noisily in its interior as the convicts sweated and slaved on the treadmill in the sweltering heat under the watchful eye of the soldiers. Perhaps Tom had once placed his hand in exactly the same spot.

Further afield, at the bora ring near Samford (one of the best preserved in the region), I trudged along the ridge line following the sacred path between the large and small rings, trying to create an image in my mind of the kippa ceremony and to capture a sense of the occasion. To further cement my understanding of the terrain I drew a rough sketch showing the creeks, the boys’ huts, the bora rings and the kakka. Tom would also have trodden this way.

Unfortunately, the old Murrumba Homestead at Petrie (a 20 minute drive from where I live) was demolished and has been replaced with a school. However, I did find a number of photos, and many of the trees Tom planted still stand on the hillside overlooking the town of Petrie and the North Pine River.

Murrumba

Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey (eighth century BC) were the first written narratives in Western culture and marked the transition from the oral epic to literary forms from which would ultimately stem the novel. In these works, fact and fiction blend in a marriage of history and myth passed on down through the ages. From these common beginnings factual and fictional writing emerged into separate forms before eventually coming together again in the novel.

Factual and fictional writing began going their separate ways in the fifth century BC with Herodotus’s account of the Greco-Persian wars in The Histories. The separation is complete with the empirical writings of Thucydides whose rationalism was not to be equalled until the seventeenth century. The fourth century BC was critical in the development of the historical novel. In his Cyropedia, historian Xenophon mixes fact and fiction in his depiction of a historical figure.

Some scholars argue that Roman literary theory put a deliberate end to the development of the historical narrative as a form of literature. Empiricists insisted on facts and objectivity to the detriment of a narrative based in reality; as a result historical writing became a dry affair with little attraction for the lay person. However, fiction continued to develop in the form of the Greek romance. Marked by a highly stylised plot and little attention to history, the romance became popular throughout the Mediterranean region, and later had a significant influence on the development of the novel.

The dominant literary texts throughout the Middle Ages were religious while secular writers concentrated on poetry, drama and especially allegory. It suffices here to mention such important works as the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf, the French classic La Chanson de Roland and the Icelandic family sagas among many others. The thirteenth century Icelandic sagas are important because they are a marriage of history and romance and therefore a precursor to the novel.

A work that did have a significant impact on the later development of the historical novel in Europe was Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605). The story is about a deluded landowner who sets out as a knight on a quest to rescue a maiden in distress. In his insanity, Don Quixote sees windmills as attacking knights and a donkey as a warhorse. Perhaps most importantly, Don Quixote popularised prose writing from which the novel subsequently evolved.

The first English novels, for example Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe(1719) and Moll Flanders (1722), differed from the allegory or romance by accentuating realism and the development of character in a social context. The latter half of the eighteenth century saw the emergence of the Gothic novel which is often set in the Middle Ages and deals with horror, mystery and terror in a dark form of historical fiction. One example is Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, often considered to be the first of the genre; the novel is presented as a translation of ancient texts, a real archival document in its own right. The aim of the Gothic novel is to use our preconceptions of what was supposedly a terrifying era as the stage on which indescribable horrors can manifest to terrorise our modern sensitivities.

The historical novel had its origins in ancient times and continued to develop through the ages, but it wasn’t until the nineteenth century that it became established as a popular genre. Most critics regard Scott’s Waverley (published anonymously in 1814) as the earliest example of the historical novel, to a large part due to its widespread popularity and ensuing influence on the novel form. This work of fiction was based on in-depth research that Scott included as notes covering ballads, poetry, culture, politics, historical events and more.

Andrew Hook, in the introduction to the 1972 edition of Waverley, claims the book and later works by Scott played a crucial role in establishing the novel as the predominant form of Western narrative literature for the last 200 years. Scott’s novels had an unprecedented influence on Western readers that has not been seen since. Driven by a renewed interest in the customs, characters and cultures of the past and new technology in printing, the public consumed Scott’s historical fiction with a fervour hard to imagine in today’s society. Hook argues that Scott’s work saw the birth of the historical novel as a new literary genre which rapidly claimed a place as one of the most popular forms of the novel.

Waverley’s perceived authenticity and writing style revolutionised the novel’s image, gaining it much authority and reputation. Waverley also had a significant influence on the way the world saw Scotland. Scott’s depiction of Scotland’s history, its culture and people, inflamed the imagination of his readers to the point that it became increasingly recognised as a land of romance and adventure.

To sum up, both historical and fictional writing share common origins in Homer’s epics. Over the years, their paths separated with the first historical writing appearing in the fifth century BC. Once seen as an art, history stagnated in Roman times while fiction continued to develop, culminating in the novel form in the eighteenth century. Although there were precedents as early as the fourth century BC, the historical novel came into its own with the appearance of Waverley in 1814. The unprecedented popularity of Scott’s historical novels established the novel as the predominant form of narrative literature in the West.

 My partner Rose and I will soon be on our way to the island of Espiritu Santo in Vanuatu for a short stay accompanied by a group of Francophiles. One interesting fact about Santo – as it is known by the locals – is that James A. Michener was stationed there during World War Two and the island is the locale depicted, albeit fictitiously, in his Pulitzer Prize (1948) winning novel Tales of the South Pacific, which later became a musical hit on Broadway for many years.

Michener was born in New York City on the third of February 1907. As a teenager, he hitched lifts and rode boxcars across America on a voyage of discovery and learning through his many experiences taking odd-jobs such as working in carnival shows. In later life he also travelled widely for the research of his novels.

In 1929, Michener graduated from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania with degrees in English and Psychology. He then travelled and studied in Europe for two years before teaching high school English in Pennsylvania. He earned a Master’s degree at the University of Northern Colorado where he then taught for several years. During World War Two he was a naval historian in the South Pacific Ocean and held the rank of Lieutenant. His notes and experiences in the Pacific formed the basis for his first novel Tales of the South Pacific published in 1947. The following is the blurb from the back of the book:

Enter the exotic world of the South Pacific, with its endless ocean, the tiny specks of coral we call islands, the coconut palms, the waves breaking into spray against the reefs, and the full moon rising behind the volcanoes.

Meet the men and women caught up in the drama of a big war. The young Marine who falls madly in love with a beautiful Tonkinese girl. Nurse Nellie and her French planter, Emile De Becque. The soldiers, sailors, and nurses playing at war and waiting for love in a tropic paradise.

Most of Michener’s works are historical novels renowned for the thorough research that is the foundation for his epic stories which sweep through the generations to the background of world history. He has published over four dozen books including: The Source, Hawaii¸ Centennial, Sayonara, Poland, Texas, The Covenant­ , The Drifters . . .

Espiritu Santo

Santo is the largest of Vanuatu’s 83 islands which are inhabited by the Melanesian Ni Van people. Pottery dated to 1400 BC and brought to the islands by the Lapita has been found on Malo Island off the southern end of Santo. Portuguese explorer Pedro Fernandez de Quires was searching for the southern continent of Terra Australis when he sailed into Big Bay in 1606 and named the land Terra Australis del Espiritu Santo. Captain James Cook was on his second voyage in 1774 when he called the archipelago the New Hebrides, which was changed to Vanuatu on the country gaining its independence in 1980. From 1906, Vanuatu was governed by a French/English Condominium which meant two of everything: laws, including road rules; police forces and prisons; currencies; languages; health and education. During the Blackbirding period from the 1870s until it was outlawed in 1904, thousands of islanders were coerced into labouring on the Queensland sugar cane plantations. Under the threat of Japanese invasion in 1942 the Americans stationed 50,000 men in Luganville on Santo to support three bomber airports and the navy port. Some 500,000 Allied servicemen passed through the islands during the war.

Champagne Beach, Santo