The Irishman

My first Australian book for the year.  I always put it off, but when I get started I can't put it down no matter how it affects me.  And I get affected in a few ways.
I have lived in Canada for a little over twenty five years now, and as good as my life here is, it just isn't Australia (to be specific Canberra).  I have lived in Canada more than I ever lived in Canberra, and the last time I went home I realised how displaced I was.  Everything was sublimely wonderful while I was there, but I knew that it was no longer what was familiar.  I had forgotten a lot in twenty years absense.
I have been working on being more Australian since my visit in '06, in the ways that matter to me and in the ways that I was not able to indulge in when I lived there, and one of those was to catch up in Autralian literature ( I had always dreamed of studying it at the Australian National University in Canberra).   I have missed out on a lot in my life, and I'm making up for it now.   Now that I am free to make some choices, find new interests and indulge in what used to be just impossible dreams.
Phew.  That all being said, I thought that the best place to start would be with award winning books and The Miles Franklin Award seemed to be the best of all, the criteria being that the Award is presented each year to a novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases.   It has always been a good way for me to get into something new, reading award winner books.  It's a solid method for pointing me in the right direction towards other Australian authors,  and publishers.

The Irishman by Elizabeth O'Connor is quite similar to others I have read from that time (the 1920's era), but I found it different too.  The slang was unfamiliar (and also quite funny), one phrase in particular referring to someone who talks a lot as a 'magpie' (you would have to have heard a magpie to understand that one, I'm sorry), and after that making the phrase into a verb "magging".
The racist labels for the local aborigines really bothered me, and the attitude towards them was uncomfortable for me too.  But I always try to take an anthropological view point to such things.  This is what it was like then.  I try not to judge, just observe.
The overall feeling though was Australia at it's most basic essence.  I could just picture what it was like there in the Gulf Country.  Imagine the warmth radiating from the ground, the smell from the Gums and the Tea trees.  Billy tea and damper.  The storms that would appear out of nowhere in absolute exciting splendor, the black clouds, flashes of lightning and tremendous heart-stopping thunder.  That delicious smell of the first bit of rain hitting the ground. 

Which brings me to the other way reading such literature affects me.  I get homesick. It's not something I like to feel.  It makes it easier when I read stories from different eras, because that doesn't seem as real to me, but all the same, I wish I was there, experiencing rather than just remembering it.

The C-word Rant

I have just recently read The True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey (well...not very recently, I had to take a couple of weeks to mull it over first before I could write calmly about it).  When DH first bought it I automatically dismissed it because instinctually I just don't want to go there in my mind, but a friend recommended it to me so I thought it was time to have a look.  It was pretty much as I expected, the usual story, with some neat little extras,  a story told in letter form to his fictional daughter, and it was nice how Ned tried to tone down his cursing by substituting the word adjectival instead of the usual words.  Which was probably a good idea as he had a lot to be adjectivally mad about.  At the end I felt the usual frustration and anger, which I have always felt.  Maybe this is hardwired into all Australians?  The indignation felt over such outrageous treatment of another human being.

At the root of it I will always be angry about how convicts and descendants of convicts were treated.  It has become personal for me.  When I was a kid and was taught at school about Ned Kelly he was always held up as a colonial hero (even though he was a thief and a murderer which was much more than what his father, who was a convict, was sent over for in the first place).  He has always been a folk hero because he fought against the English which has always been a very hard thing to do. Those Emglish bastards had so much power over everyone else (and incidentally there were thieves and murderers too among the upper gentry who could get away with it because of their class and power).  To be fair, the English weren't all like that, and I have been making a study of various journals and books written by people of the times, trying to get a grasp of my own heritage and history.  No matter the origins, these are the people who built Australia from the bottom up.  That's nothing to be ashamed of.

It became personal for me because since I immigrated to Canada I have been asked a few times if I was descended from convicts (I don't know if I am), but the latest, most rudest, stupidest, arse-hattiest question was pointed at me last spring where the tool who asked outright after finding out I was Australian,  "Are you a criminal?".  He thought it was funny and even laughed at me.     The guy was actually raving about a trip he wanted to take to Australia specifically to do the surfing etc. and it occurred to me at the time to give him a little warning about not asking that kind of question to people there, but something stopped me from doing so, and I can only hope that he does ask someone there, hopefully at the local pub filled with really beefy guys from the local footy team.

Thing is, Australia would not be what it is today if it weren't for the convicts and colonists.  Douglas Adams wrote this lovely little story about Australia that is included in his very last book The Salmon of Doubt  (compiled after his death), which I recommend reading because, naturally it is funny, but also provides a different point of view to the whole idea of dumping criminals in a paradise like Australia.  I am proud of my heritage, no matter what, because hard working backbone-of-the-country type people stuck it to the English and made a great nation, chock full of the most brightest, creative and beautiful people.  It's something to be proud of.

So give the True History a read.  Even with it's fictional elements it is still really close to the original story, he did those things, and for those reasons.  Try not to get too mad about how it ended for Ned and remember that he is a legend, which is more powerful than anything he could have ever done while he was alive.