An Australian Classic: The Fortunes of Richard Mahony by Henry Handel Richardson

The Fortunes of Richard Mahony is a 943 page classic and an Australian one at that. It is also a tragedy. The author relentlessly follows the ‘fortunes’ of both Richard Mahony and his wife, Polly (known as Mary later in the book), the ups and downs of their rollercoaster-like lives, the inevitable sadness of their circumstances.

Mahony is an Irish immigrant whose restless nature will never allow him to settle anywhere for very long. Although he is proud and exceptionally thin-skinned, he is at heart a kind man. Mary is originally from England and puts down roots easily. She is loyal, tends to see the best in people and makes the most of circumstances. They are as different as chalk and cheese in many ways but they care for each other and life goes on reasonably well it becomes clear that Mahony will never settle anywhere. 

The Fortunes of Richard Mahony was written between 1917 and 1929 as a trilogy: Australia Felix, The Way Home, and Ultima Thule, but was re-published as one book in 1930. Henry Handel Richardson is the pen name of Ethel Florence Lindsay Richardson (1870-1946).

The book begins during the mid 1800’s gold rush in Ballarat where Mahony works in his store selling supplies to the miners. He had originally qualified as a medical doctor before emigrating to Australia but set that aside for the lure of the goldfields. He meets Mary on a trip to Melbourne when he is in his late twenties and she is only sixteen. They marry soon after meeting and she comes to live in Ballarat.

With his wife’s encouragement, Mahony takes up medical practice again and does very well but his restlessness makes him miserable.  He insists that life in England would be much more suitable for them, culturally and socially. So off they go only for Mahony to find that the grass is not as green as he had thought. Doctors were still not much higher in the social scale than barbers in this 'slow-thinking, slow moving country.' 

‘Long residence in a land where every honest man was the equal of his neighbour had unfitted him for the genuflexions of the English middle-classes before the footstools of the great.’

Although his pride was hurt by the attitude of the people to his profession, he was furious when he learnt that Mary was snubbed by some of the ladies of the town. Studying her objectively, he realised that she was different. Her manner was natural and spontaneous which contrasted to their restraint and it seemed to him that,

'...into all Mary did or said there had crept something large and free - a dash of the spaciousness belonging to the country that had become her true home.'

There are some interesting backdrops to this book: the Victorian goldfields and the Eureka Stockade, the Crimean War, Lister’s experiments in Glasgow, the English class system, and the fear of the Kelly Gang in country Victoria. It touches, too, on the treatment of the mentally ill - asylums were basically prisons and visits by relatives were discouraged. Mahony becomes intensely interested in Spiritualism for a time, attending seances and the like - apparently Ballarat had a small group of very devout believers in the 1800’s. 

There are also many philosophical tangents in the book as Mahony thinks about faith, science and eternity.

It’s interesting reading this in 2020 where the average lifespan is significantly longer than it was in the 1800’s. I kept reading jarring comments about someone being past their prime at 39 years of age ?! and a person was described as ‘very old’ when they were 61 or 62 years old.

The Fortunes of Richard Mahony is a very compassionate and in-depth exploration of a marriage. At different times the author allows the couple to share their individual thoughts. I thought this was very well done and helped me to understand both parties. Mahony's personality is so thoroughly explored that even though at times he appears to be a real jerk, one cannot help but feel some empathy. He tended to have flashes of inspiration that came too late:

'For such a touchy nature I'm certainly extraordinarily obtuse where the feelings of others are concerned.'

'To be perpetually in the company of other people irked him beyond belief. A certain amount of privacy was as vital to him as sleep.'

'His first impressions of people - he had had the occasion to deplore the fact before now - were apt to be either dead white or black as ink; the web of his mind took no half tints.'

As time passed, Mahony grew increasingly withdrawn. His work left no time for friendships, so he said, and although his wife was dear to him, he missed the companionship an old friendship provided. The 'solid base of joint experience' was gone but his life had become too set to allow him to start building another.

'...the one person he had been intimate with passed out of his life. There was nobody to take the vacant place...He had no talent for friendship.'

Richardson was a gifted woman and an excellent writer. Obviously well-educated, her writing is peppered with allusions to mythology and Latin words. From what I've read of her life, this book has strong undercurrents of her own experiences.

Linking up with Brona for the 2020 AusReading Month.

AusReading Month: Seven Little Australians by Ethel Turner (1894)

Seven Little Australians by Ethel Turner is a beloved Australian children’s classic that was first published in 1894 and has never been out of print since. So it with some trepidation and ducking of the head that I am going to say that I was fairly underwhelmed when I finally got around to reading it. My three girls read it before me - they were about 9 years of age when they first read it. As far as I remember, they all liked it, although it didn’t appeal to them as much as some of the other Australian classics they read around the same age e.g. The Silver Brumby and Billabong books.

At one point the story reminded me of an incident in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, which was published twenty-five years earlier. Meg is the eldest daughter of the family in this book, as was Meg (Margaret) in Little Women. In both books ‘Meg’ is influenced by another girl to put on airs and act out of character and a young man is pivotal in both instances in helping 'Meg' see the foolishness of her behaviour.
My 12 year old re-read Seven Little Australians recently so I asked her if it reminded her of any other book she’d read. It hadn’t, and I mentioned that I thought in one part that it was similar to Little Women. Her reply was that ‘Seven Little Australians didn’t carry on about morals, unlike Little Women...'

If you imagine you are going to read of model children, with perhaps a naughtily inclined one to point a moral, you had better lay down the book immediately...
Not one of the seven is really good, for the very excellent reason that Australian children never are.

But my daughter also said that she hated the ending.
Which brings me to a couple of things I think was problematic with the story: the ending felt rushed and melodramatic, and the characters were never satisfyingly developed. I never felt I got to know anyone well enough and out of the two characters I thought had development potential, one is dispatched by the author before the story finishes.
However, the book is definitely worth reading and the writing itself is excellent and of literary quality, as you would expect of a classic that has never been out of print.



Linking up for the AusReading Challenge 2017 @ Brona's Books

A Murder Unmentioned by Sulari Gentill

A Murder Unmentioned by Sulari Gentill is the sixth book in the Rowland Sinclair series of crime mysteries set in Australia in the 1930’s.
One of the author’s trademarks throughout this series, and one of its most enjoyable aspects, is the cast of historical characters she skilfully weaves into the narrative.
Kingsford Smith, Nancy Bird, Robert Menzies, along with some notorious Sydney underworld figures, are some of these characters she includes in A Murder Unmentioned, bringing to life the atmosphere of Australian life in the post-Depression years.
Historical characters of the times have been a focal point in each of her books, however, in A Murder Unmentioned the plot takes centre stage, and it’s a good one. Suspense, mystery and plenty of twists kept me glued to its pages and made this my favourite book in the series so far.

Rowland’s father, Henry Sinclair, died when Rowland was 15 years of age and throughout the series references to his authoritarian and domineering personality are made, but he is mostly kept in the background. His portrait hangs on the wall of Woodlands, Rowland’s home that he shares with his three Bohemian friends, Clyde, Milton and Edna, an imposing and disapproving presence glowering over everyone that comes within view. Frequent mention is made of Rowland’s reactions to this painting over the course of the series, and here he remarks to Edna that the reason he hung the picture in his home was because,

“My father always liked to keep an eye on me.”

Edna wondered if she had misjudged Henry Sinclair. Rowland rarely spoke of his father but that need not, of itself, mean that their relationship had been strained. Perhaps it was a silence born of loss. Perhaps, beneath the outward severity, Henry Sinclair was an artistic soul. Rowland’s talent, Edna reasoned, must have come from somewhere. “It’s a shame he didn’t live to see your work, Rowley,” she said quietly.
Rowland frowned, his jaw tightened . “It’s not a shame at all, Ed.”

In previous books we had a hazy view of Henry Sinclair, but now we learn who Henry Sinclair really was and of his harshness and cruelty to his youngest son, Rowland.
When new evidence emerges about Henry Sinclair’s death and a former employee turns up to implicate family members, Rowland and his older brother, Wilbur, have to face the past, their individual fears and their secrets.
As always, Sulari Gentill doesn’t shy away from difficult subjects, but in her delightful way she infuses some well-timed Aussie humour that takes the edge off the heavy stuff without detracting from the seriousness of it. Quite a skill!
I’m looking forward to the next book so much but I’m getting impatient for Edna to get over herself and reciprocate Rowly’s feelings!


I’m linking up with Brona’s Books for the AusReading Challenge 2017 over the month of November. Come and have a look at some of the great Aussie titles on her blog!





 

AusReading Month: Come Danger, Come Darkness by Ruth Park (1978)

Ruth Park (1917-2010) was a prolific, multiple award-winning, New Zealand born Australian author. The author’s background in rural New Zealand and her later experience of the Great Depression while living in Sydney, gave her much to draw upon in her writing.
Come Danger, Come Darkness is set on Norfolk Island, about 1,000 km off the east coast of Australia. The author lived on the island for a number of years and described its natural features vividly.

Norfolk Island was discovered by Captain Cook in 1774 on his second voyage around the world. In 1788 a settlement was established on the island. This was later abandoned, but a second settlement began in 1825 and continued until 1855, and Norfolk Island came to be described as the 'Hell of the Pacific.'  The story takes place at this time in the island's history.

Thirteen-year old Otter Cannon and his seven year old brother, Paddy Paul, were brought from Ireland to Sydney by their recently widowed mother. The plan had been to join Major Daniel Cannon, her husband’s brother, and his family, in order that her boys would grow up as gentlemen and follow the family tradition of serving as officers in the army.
However, by the time the bereaved family arrived in Sydney, Major Cannon had been appointed Commandant of the prison settlement at Norfolk Island, a nineteen-day sea voyage from New South Wales, and the plan had to change.
The boys’ mother made the agonising decision to send the boys to Norfolk Island to join their Uncle and his family while she remained in Sydney.
The younger boy was excited about going to the island. His ambition was to be an army officer just as his father had been, but Otter’s greatest desire was to become a surgeon. This was frowned upon and his mother hoped that his uncle’s influence would change the boy’s mind.

The steersman skilfully inched the vessel as far as he dared towards the land, and the anchors whomped into the placid sea. Now the sounds of the land, forgotten since Sydney, drifted towards them - human voices, the freak of a windlass, the sweet splash of the cascade. In spite of himself, Otter was captivated by the scene. In full sunrise, the island looked like an illustration from a romance of kings and goblins. The steep plushy hills to the west demanded castles on their heights, of watch towers, or hermits’ ruined cells. But there were no towers except the pines, no ruins but the blocks of black stone piled on the narrow beach like wrecked masonry.

This is an exciting, action-filled story that keeps your attention until the very end. Mystery, danger, a whale hunt, escaped convicts, shipwreck; themes of loyalty, courage and justice - a great choice for a family read aloud with much to discuss and explore.

Not far away he saw a whale’s head, an old bull’s, marbled with age, water gushing out of the    downcurved mouth in torrents. Food, mostly tiny shrimps, was retained behind the black baleen that fringed the animal’s jaw...
Like an island emerging from the sea, the whale surfaced, tearing up the water, cascades foaming down its wet-leather flanks. It was over twenty metres long and nearly three metres higher than the men’s heads. It’s one visible eye, blue with a brown ring, glared in astonishment from that wall of head. Whissssht! The harpooner sent the javelin-like weapon hissing into its flank.

The whale hunt might be a little intense for a sensitive soul; a couple of times the word ‘damned’ is used and once an Irish Catholic convict cried, ”Oh, Holy Mary, they’re on to us!” Otherwise I’d say about age 10 years and up for a child to read on their own.
The book brims with the understanding, empathy and insight that Ruth Park had for her young audience and her writing style is excellent.
163 pages; out of print but available for a reasonable price at AbeBooks. I noticed many of the book sellers were in Austalia or N.Z. so check postage as it may be cheaper if you're ordering from either of those places.

Norfolk Island was self-governed for 36 years but that changed in 2015 when the Norfolk Island Legislation Amendment Bill 2015 replaced the Norfolk Island Legislative Assembly.

Some Norfolk Island information is here & here.

Author information: Ruth Park, A Celebration.



Linking up with Brona's Books for the AusReading Challenge 2017

AusReading Month: Silvertail: The Story of a Lyrebird by Ina Watson; illustrations by Walter Cunningham (1946)

Silvertail is a lyrebird. As everything has a beginning, I am going to start by telling you where Silvertail lived, and about his people, for of course he had a family just as you have.

Silvertail, a superb lyrebird, was born in a forest deep in the hills of Southern Victoria. Suberb lyrebirds (Menura novaehollandiae) are ground dwelling birds that have an amazing ability to mimic other birds - the calls of scrub wrens, parrots, kookaburras, cockatoos and whip-birds, are to be found in their repertoire. Although they can fly, their wings are rounded and not suited to any great distance. They build their nests in old tree stumps and roost in trees at night.

Silvertails's father and mother had a real name - one belonging to their family. They were called Mr. and Mrs. Menura...
They were a handsome couple...But the pride of the family was father's tail. It was very long and consisted of sixteen feathers...two broad, outside ones...twelve, very fluffy filmy feathers, and two lone, wire-like centre ones. On top they were the same colour as the rest of the bird, but underneath they were a beautiful silvery white.


The story of Silvertail began with nest prepartions mostly carried out by Mrs Menura while Mr Menura spent his time building his dancing mounds. A few weeks after the nest had been completed,  a solitary egg was laid in the nest and about six weeks afterwards Silvertail hatched out of his shell.
He spent about five weeks in his nest and then it was time for him to leave his cozy, safe home and begin the most dangerous part of his life. His mother taught him to find his own food and began to acquaint him with some of the other animals and birds that lived nearby and to avoid others such as the wily fox.

 


Mr Menura didn't spend too much time with his offspring at first, although he kept an eye out nearby for both the youngster and his mother; but as Silvertail grew, his father began to take more of an interest in him and to teach him how to sing. He also taught Silvertail how to use his tail in the dance but it would be a little while yet before he could boast a tail like his father's.
The seasons came and went, Silvertail grew and then one day, Silvertail found a mate...

Through all his own calls and the many others that he could now mimic perfectly, he pleaded his cause...





Silvertail is a delightful story written in such a way that a five or six year old would enjoy. There is just enough detail, depth and factual information embedded in the lively narrative for that age group and Walter Cunningham's illustrations enhance it even more.
In the foreword to the book, Australian naturalist, Crosbie Morrison writes:

Miss Ina Watson...is not just a casual caller on the Lyrebirds of Sherbrooks; over the years she has become a friend of the family. She knows them so intimately that they no longer whip off their aprons and stuff them behind a chair and show her into the front room when she calls - they let her come into the kitchen, as it were, and help with the washing up. It is not until you know people - or birds - like that that you can write of them easily, and naturally, and entrancingly, and truthfully, as Miss Watson has done.

The book is out of print but available secondhand (eBay & AbeBooks)

Some links of interest:

Lyrebirds Mimicking Chainsaws?

Lyrebird Facts

The Royal Australian Mint - the suberb lyrebird is featured on our Australian ten cent coin.

Winter Call of the Lyrebirds



Linking up at Brona's Books for the AusReading Month 2016. Come and have a look if you're looking for some great Australian titles to read.

Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington (Nugi Garimara)

Follow the Rabbit Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington/Nugi Garimara is the true story of the author's mother, Molly. In 1931, Molly, aged about 15 years of age and her younger sisters Gracie and Daisy, about 12 and 11 years,* were removed from their remote Aboriginal community at Jigalong in the north-west of Western Australia and taken to the Native Settlement at Moore River, north of Perth.
(*There's some discrepancy in the girl's ages as their births were not registered.)

The Story

The first three chapters of Follow the Rabbit Proof Fence sketch a picture of the early days of white settlement in Western Australia in which a military outpost was established at Albany and the Swan River Colony was founded at Fremantle.

By the 1900's the boundaries of white settlement were extended and government policies were introduced that allowed large areas of land to be claimed by farmers and pastoralists. No provision was made for the traditional landowners which meant that the Aboriginal people in those areas became dispossessed of their traditional lands, and therefore their social structures.
In 1907, Jigalong, in the Pilbara region, was established as a government depot and base for the men who maintained the rabbit-proof fence. The Superintendent of the depot was also the Protector of Aborigines for the area. It was into this community that the first 'half-caste' (muda-muda) baby to be seen amongst the Jigalong people was born to a 16 year old Aboriginal girl named Maude. The baby's father was a white maintenance inspector, Thomas Craig.

Molly grew into a pretty little girl. Her mother was very proud of her and her father brought her gifts of clothing and pretty coloured ribbons...
As she grew older, Molly often wished that she didn't have light skin so that she didn't have to play by herself...The Mardu children insulted her and said hurtful things about her. Some told her that because she was neither Mardi or wudgebulla (white man) she was like a mongrel dog.

One morning, when Molly was about four years old, her mother told her some exciting news. Two of her aunties had babies, little girls and they were both muda-mudas like her.

At this time, the Chief Protector of Aborigines was the legal guardian of every Aboriginal child in Western Australia up to the age of 16 years, and he had the power to remove Aboriginal children from their families and place them in Homes or in 'service' (work).

The Superintendent at Jigalong had been taking a great deal of interest in Mollie and Gracie and he noticed that the attitude of the Mardi children towards the girls was unfair and reported the situation to the Department of Native Affairs in Perth saying that the girls would be better off if they were removed from Jigalong.

The common belief at the time was that part-Aboriginal children were more intelligent than their darker relations and should be isolated and trained to be domestic servants and labourers. Policies were introduced by the government in an effort to improve the welfare and educational needs of these children. Molly, Gracie and Daisy were completely unaware that they were to be included in the schemes designed for children who were fathered by white men. 

When Molly was about 14 or 15 years of age, the Protector of Aborigines came to their camp to announce that he had come to take the three girls down to the school at the Moore River Native Settlement north of Perth. A car and a train ride took them to Port Hedland and from there a ship conveyed them to the Port of Fremantle. They were then transported by car to Moore River.

It was intended that this would be their home for several years, and where they would be educated in European ways.
Only twelve months before this...the Superintendent at the Government Depot at Jigalong, wrote in his report that, "these children lean more towards the black than white and on second thoughts, think nothing would be gained in removing them."
Someone read it. No one responded.

The girls had only been two nights at the settlement when Molly made up her mind that they were not going to stay. On the morning of what was to be their first day of school, Molly announced to her sisters that they were going home. They would find the rabbit-proof fence and follow it all the way to Jigalong. Molly's father had told her the fence stretched from coast to coast, south to north across the country, and though stupefied by the idea at first, the two girls trusted their older sister and said they would run away with her.
Barefoot, wearing two dresses and two pairs of bloomers each, with no food, maps, or supplies, they made their dash for freedom in the rain.

Almost nine weeks and 1500 miles later, two of the girls returned home to Jigalong having avoided capture by police, an Aboriginal tracker, and a plane search in the course of their travels.

The author made use of oral and archival records to reconstruct the events of her narrative: interviews with Molly and Daisy who were in their late sixties and seventies when the book was written, and records of geographical and botanical explorations of the area, for example. There were so many factors that had to be taken into account by the author, not least the fact that the Aboriginals used the seasons, incidents and events to measure time, not dates and numbers. Illiteracy and lack of numeracy skills were major obstacles to be overcome before the events of the story could be determined. However, the author managed to accomplish this daunting task and write a compelling, heartfelt, and vivid account of this incredible episode in Australia's history.

The book was published in 1996 and the film based on the book - 'Rabbit Proof Fence' was released in 2002. The film departs from the book in places and having read the book, I think it was a more powerful story than the film as it focussed on what actually happened rather than trying to make a political statement.

Any discussion of the 'Stolen Generation' opens a massive can of worms and I spent a lot of time reading various articles and thinking back on the time my family spent in the Pilbara region when I was a child in the 1970's.
The school we attended was separate from the Aboriginal school situated almost next door where 'full blood' Aboriginals were taught in their native language. The 'mixed blood' kids were in with the rest of us and didn't identify at all with those in the other school. We lived next door to an Aboriginal family and I was good friends with their daughter. We didn't consider them to be any different to us any more than if they had been Italian or Greek.
My mum doesn't have a racist bone in her body. Her stepfather was a Pakistani and married my Grannie after he moved to Scotland around the time of Partition, I think. Inter-racial marriage was very unusual at the time and mum had a terrible time at school because she had a black dad, so she was sensitive to this type of treatment. However, when we moved to Australia and eventually went to the Pilbara region for dad's work, I remember mum commenting with disgust on seeing Aboriginal men in the pub spending their welfare cheques on alcohol while their wives and children sat around outside, sometimes getting into fights, and often leaving young children to their own devices.

The prominent and respected Aboriginal leader, Noel Pearson, has said that more should be done to empower Indigenous communities, and thinking back to my own experiences I can see the truth in what he is saying. While I believe that there is a definite place and need for acknowledgment and redress of past injustices, it can't be at the expense of fixing today's problems. However, the truth remains that it's not a simple issue and there is no simple solution.

The book is recommended for Year 9 students but it could be saved for a later year so that some of these very important issues could be explored when the student is more mature. Chronologically, it fits into Year 10/11 of Ambleside Online but regardless of that, it's one of those important topics that needs to be covered in a balanced way by Australian students.
This unabridged audio narrated by Rachael Maza is excellent and her Torres Strait Island background gives an authentic and intimate feel to the story:

Linking up with Brona's Books for the AusReading Month

The Silver Brumby by Elyne Mitchell (1913-2002)

Once there was a dark, stormy night in spring, when, deep down in their holes, the wombats knew not to come out, when the possums stayed quiet in their hollow limbs, when the great black flying phalangers that live in the mountain forests never stirred. On this night, Bel Bel, the cream brumby mare, gave birth to a colt foal, pale like herself, or paler, in that wild, black storm.

The Silver Brumby was published in 1958 and is the first book in a series of thirteen novels written by Elyne Mitchell. It is the story of Thowra, a young colt born during that stormy night on the Australian Alps. The story follows Thowra through his early years as he learns from his mother the cunning and wisdom needed to survive in the wild. His lifelong battles with men who prized him for his silvery coat, the friction with other stallions as he comes to the peak of his strength, and later, the birth of his own daughter, Kunama, is told with vigour and close attention to detail.

 Spring comes to the Australian Alps like an invisible spirit. There is not the tremendous surge of upthrust life that there is in lowland valleys, and no wild flowers bloom in the snow mountains till the early summer, but there is an immense stirring of excitement. A bright red and blue lowrie flits through the trees; snow thaws, and the streams become full of foaming water; the grey, flattened grass grows upwards again and becomes greener; wild horses start to lose their winter coats and find new energy; wombats sit, round and fat, blinking in the evening sunshine; at night there is the cry of a dingo to its mate.

 Wildflowers on the Australian Alps in Summer

Elyne Mitchell grew up around horses and married a grazier. She had a close connection to the land, especially the Snowy Mountains area, and the places she describes in her books are those that were familiar to her.
I've visited the Snowy Mountains a few times and her writing evoked memories I have of the area. There is a ring of authenticity as well as a literary quality to her writing.

All the world was very quiet, high up there on the range. It was rarely that any other horses, except Storm and his herd, ever came as high, and most animals were already heading lower, anyway, before the snow came.
They saw dingoes, and occasionally a red fox, his pelt thick and good for winter, would show up against the grey-green grass. Thorwa noticed how busy the scurrying insects were, from the tiny ants to the great bright blue and red mountain grasshoppers - but he, too, knew that it was going to be a heavy winter.

 Summer on the Snowies

Some thoughts & comments

Brumbies are wild, undomesticated, feral horses that are not native to Australia but which have become closely identified with the Australian landscape. You only have to recall the popularity of the movie The Man From Snowy River and the opening ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games to understand this affinity.

The Crackenback River referred to in the book is now known as the Thredbo River.

 Down by the Crackenback the wattles were in flower and the golden balls fell on to his back, stuck to his mane. Under foot were the little puce Black-eyed Susans. The Bitter Pea scrub was flowering, brown and gold, nearly shoulder high to a cream stallion. The mountain world was bursting into flower, everything filled with joy in living.

The book reminds me in some ways of the original story of Bambi, partly because of the style of the writing and partly the manner in which both authors depicted the animals they wrote about. The main difference between the two is that the animals in Bambi were helpless before the threat man posed, whereas the stallions in The Silver Brumby were wild, could often hold their own, and sometimes injured their pursuers. They were not hunted and killed for sport like the deer in Bambi, but admired for their strength and agility and prized for their potential if caught and trained.


Although the animals in The Silver Brumby talk to each other, it doesn't make the story less real. The animals are true to their natures; the narrative never feels false or unbelievable. The communication between the animals gives insight into how they respond in different situations and helps the reader to understand their actions and have some empathy for them.

When Elyne Mitchell published the first book in her Brumby series in 1958, there was very little Australian content to be found in children's literature. Already an established writer, she wrote this series for her daughter, Indi, to whom the book is dedicated. Below is a quote from an article written about the author:

Towong Hill was isolated and lacked access to libraries, and Elyne was not happy with the reading matter available for her daughter, especially books, with a lack of Australian content. So she wrote The Silver Brumby using the mountains and brumbies as her setting and characters and Indi at age ten was after all, ‘crazy about ponies.’ It started off as a short story but soon Indi was ‘waiting at the typewriter for the next instalment.’

Since then, these stories of the wild brumbies of the Australian High Country have been loved by readers of all ages and have been translated into eight languages.

The Silver Brumby would suit a confident reader around the age of about 10 years and would be a wonderful read aloud from around age 7. It has a good balance of descriptive writing wrapped up in an exciting adventure which keeps you wondering and hoping Thowra will come through all the danger and obstacles he encounters.
The edition below was published to celebrate the centenary of Elyne Mitchell's birth and contains the first four titles in the series - The Silver Brumby, Silver Brumby's Daughter, Silver Brumbies of the South, and Silver Brumby Kingdom. 

Some information on the Australian brumby here


Linking up with Brona's Books and Book Lovers Books Aussie Reading Challenges

AusReading Month: The Rainbow and the Rose by Nevil Shute

Pilot Ronnie Clarke learns that Johnnie Pascoe, the man who had taught him to fly many years before, has crashed his plane while attempting to rescue a sick child from her isolated home on the rugged west coast of Tasmania. Pascoe is lying badly injured with only the child's mother to nurse him. The child's condition begins to improves but unless Pacoe receives medical attention for his fractured skull he will die.

Clarke is the narrator of the story and as he reminisces over the past and his association with the injured pilot, he makes the decision to go to the small town in Tasmania where Pascoe is based and endeavour to fly a doctor in to the area.

Clarke persuades the reluctant young local doctor to go with him and later finds out that he has never flown before. The first attempt to assist the injured man allows the doctor to drop a suitcase of medical equipment out of the plane onto the tiny airstrip next to the homestead but the doctor himself is unable to get out of the plane. Clarke returns to town as the weather conditions begin to deteriorate.

He spends the night at Pascoe's home waiting for a chance to try again the next day and learns about the older man's past, his secret history and painful memories.

As with all the books I've read by this author, I found the story simple but compelling. Nevil Shute has an easy style but he develops his characters so well. He has the ability to take a very ordinary sort of person, unwrap them and reveal their value and worth in the midst of their weaknesses and foibles. In doing this he helps the reader to empathise with his characters and I always come away from his books with a sense that he must have been a man who understood human nature but his response to that knowledge was not cynicism but kindness.

Throughout this book, Shute uses an interesting flashback technique which confused me at first and I wondered a few times what was going on. After a while I began to enjoy the way he used the technique even though it felt clunky at times. It was an interesting way to divulge information that the narrator would not have known.

This isn't one of his more well known books. Certainly, A Town Like Alice would be his best known book here in Australia and there was a TV mini-series of the story plus an earlier movie version. This is one version I've seen:

Other Nevil Shute books I've read and would recommend are:

Pied Piper  - set in WW2 in England and France.

On the Beach  - (near bottom of post) a novel dealing with a post nuclear catastrophe; set in Southern  Australian.

Nevil Shute Norway was born in England in 1899. He studied Engineering Science and worked as an aeronautical engineer. During World War 2 he worked on the development of secret weapons and after the war he settled in Australia where he lived until his death in 1960.

 Linking to Brona's Books:

Australian Natural History: Warrigal the Warrior by C.K. Thompson

Unfortunately C.K. Thompson's books are all out of print but we've been fortunate enough to pick up a few at secondhand book shops and Lifeline book sales. Our copy of Warrigal the Warrior was published in 1948 and is a wonderful story based on the Australian dingo.

Charlie Harrison was employed as a dingo-killer or 'dogger' and in his travels he came upon a young part-dingo pup who had been separated from his parents. Harrison's first reaction was to immediately shoot the animal, but when the young dingo showed no fear of the man and gazed up at him curiously, the usually tough dingo-killer couldn't bring himself to do the deed. When the dingo then approached Harrison, licked his hand and allowed himself to be picked up, he won his way into the dingo-killer's heart.

Harrison returned to his camp with the dog and not long afterwards two weary prospectors came along and were invited to share a meal.

When the visitors realised that Harrison had a dingo pup and intended to keep it they were surprised and tried to talk him into killing the dog but he refused:

"Don't do it, mate," said McPherson earnestly. "You'll have nothing but trouble if  you start that. I've known other fellows to try to rear dingoes as pets and every one of them regretted it. So will you. Apart from anything else, you'll never hold him. He might stay with you for years, but in the end he will go back to the wilds."

"I don't agree with that at all," said Harrison. "He is only a pup now. If I can keep him away from the dingo pack from now on, he will become domesticated - just the same as if he were a sheep dog or a cattle dog. Why should he want to return to the dingo pack?"

"Because the wild and primitive life is born in him, " said McPherson. "Sheep and cattle dogs have been bred under domestic conditions  for thousands of years. They are part and parcel of human life, yet sometimes they go wild. So what chance have you got with a dingo?"

Harrison eventually took Warrigal into town when he went to visit his sister and her husband. When he had to travel to the city, he asked them to care for the dog, and gave instructions that Warrigal should be kept tied up at all times. His brother-in-law, unaware that the dog was a dingo, took pity on the animal and started to let him off his chain at night.  The township became perplexed when they started to find chickens, sheep and other animals that had been killed during the night with no trace of a perpetrator. The riddle was solved when a boy who had teased Warrigal during the day when he was tied up to his kennel, was given detention after school for fighting in the playground and was required to write an essay on Australian wildlife:

Moodily he turned the pages and came across another animal. The dingo. Yes, a few bits about dingoes would go well in the essay.

But as the boy began to write from the book, his interest became aroused. He threw down his pen and gave himself up wholly to reading.

"Dingo or warrigal...the Australian wild dog," he mumbled aloud. "It has a sharp muzzle, ears short and erect...bushy tail...color varies between light reddish brown and black...unable to bark, but yelps...at night howls dismally...a silent hunter..."

This book was a fascinating insight into an animal that has been little understood. When C.K. Thompson wrote this book more than sixty years ago he said in the introduction that,

There is a new generation that knows little about the bush and the creatures that inhabit it.

The tragic Azaria Chamberlain case in the Northern Territory in 1980 highlighted this:

  "at the time, Australia wasn't able to believe that a wild dog could do such a thing."

And more recently an episode on Fraser Island, off the southern coast of Queensland that resulted in the death of a 9 year old boy.

I have not sought to glorify Warrigal, neither have I condemned him. 

I have just tried to present him as he really is, without fear or favour, affection or ill-will.

He is as nature fashioned him.

C.K. Thompson

Warrigal the Warrior is 130 pages in length and is illustrated with black and white pictures. It makes a great read aloud and would be enjoyed by a wide range of ages.

Linking up this month with Brona's Books: