It must take guts – real guts. Guts to get up on a stage to try and make an audience laugh with your only prop being what comes out of your mouth. I have the greatest of admiration for them. Imagine starting off in the game – some bar adding another string to its bow in a crowded inner-suburban field by presenting stand-up; the audience already half-tanked and perhaps on the yobbish side. Yes, it takes real guts. And what if you bombed? Would you be able to pick yourself up for another go, or simply and meekly return to your day job stacking shelves at Woolies? It’s probably a moot point to raise as to whether or not it would be oh so much harder if you were of the female gender. I suspect, either way, you’d need the hide of a rhino.

‘She’s Having a Laugh’ is a compendium of anecdotes from what Affirm Press describes as ’25 of Australia’s funniest women.’ Of course you do not have to be a stand-up comic to be funny – some of the contributors did not come to notice along that path. But many or our best did – Julia Morris, Kitty Flanagan, Celia Pacquola, Fiona O’Loughlin, Denise Scott, Hannah Gadsby – and that’s just listing my favs. Alas, none of these were represented in this tome. Many have progressed from beer halls to civic centres – and then a further few make the dizzy heights of the television screen in panel shows, as well as into print for newspapers and magazines. A fabled handful now have regular gigs in some of our best comedy and light drama series, loved by millions. Others have written their memoirs and made the nation shed tears, along with the laughter.

And there is a goodly range presented here – some names I was very familiar with, others only vaguely and yet more were unknown to me. And who better to open up proceedings than the delightful Annabel Crabb. She cut her teeth as what somebody once described as ‘…the kindest political journalist going around’. Annabel is well known for humanising pollies with ‘Kitchen Cabinet’ and her weekly column for the Age – both bringing her humour to the fore. She has also recently published with ‘The Wife Drought’. Ms Crabb, in my view, is also one of the most watchable women in the land. In ‘She’s Having a Laugh’ she relates how she managed to bake her laptop in the oven and how her career was almost cut off at the knees before it really got going. The latter was caused by her ineptitude back in her Adelaide early days with a new-fangled innovation called ’email’.

It would be fair to say that some of the accounts of ‘…love, life and comedy.’ given here were somewhat underwhelming, but I was well-educated by another favoured scribbler for newspapers’ abject horror at the state of a certain part of her anatomy after childbirth. Monica Dux reported that, ‘I didn’t recognise what I saw between my legs as human or even mammalian. If you’d shown me a picture of it and told me it was the remains of a sea creature, dredged from a deep oceanic trench, I wouldn’t have flinched.’ She took a bit of convincing that what she espied wasn’t completely abnormal. Terri Psiakis’ piece on comparing the Bloke (her hubby) to her Dad (not all accountants are dullards) is infused with her love for both her fellas, even if neither are perfect in every way. It was a standout. Tracey Spicer’s tale of her early years in television demonstrates how that medium has changed. These days there’s very little seat of your pants stuff that’s worth watching and demonstrates that once upon a time the execs had a heart. One of those glorious ‘Agony Aunts’, Yumi Stynes, tells the yarn of how attacking the soft workings of the inner ear with a cotton bud dipped in aeons old perfume is not the wisest medical probing to engage in. That story also managed to involve Khaleesi’s boobs of GofT fame. For my money, that’s about the best of them. Other notables represented in ‘She’s Having a Laugh’ are Corinne Grant, Gretel Killeen and Tegan Higginbotham.

For me, though, I reckon better value for money would be shelling out the equivalent for one of these ladies’ memoirs. Several have been best sellers and would contain more literary merit. I’ve picked the eyes out of the offerings in this title – the rest were fair to middling.

I remember her well – but not her name. And, like Sylvie, she may have been French – or of French extraction. As with Sylvie, she too was not beautiful in the classical sense – she also had the prominent nose of the novel’s protagonist. She differed in that her complexion was olive rather than pale. But like Joanna Briscoe’s calculating vixen, she caught one’s attention – perhaps for her imperfections as much as anything. Not all men are drawn to perfection in their fantasies.

The young woman I am writing of did captivate. It wasn’t only me – she drew men in. Some of my male colleagues were on the way to being bewitched too. She liked their attention, seemingly craved it. Unlike Sylvie, she didn’t seek to completely control their lives – just be involved with them in the workplace – and out. According to one female friend, who was not impressed with the way she distracted the males she worked with, this exotic addition to staff preferred to save her flirtations for the married fellow. My friend claimed the object of her scorn felt safer as, for them, the line – and it was definitely drawn – would be harder to cross. To use more basic parlance, it was less likely they would place the hard word on her. I had no intention of crossing any line but, for a while, I craved attention from her, some sort of intimacy – and she gave it, in small tantalising doses. I was, I hope, no self-centred plonker like Briscoe’s Richard. It was a serious case with him. But, I guess, for a while I was mildly obsessed. I remembered one guy, who was similarly smitten with her, started boasting to me he had only to click his fingers and she would be his for the taking – that he could bed her in a flash. I was terribly offended by that, for, in my view, simply saying those words made him unworthy of her. I resolved to do all I could to prevent that from happening – although how I had no idea. In the end she ditched any connection with the both of us and turned her attention to another bloke and that was that. I have no idea what became of her and it all happened so many decades ago. Whether she posed the question ‘Sleep With Me’, the book’s title, to any of the other male members at the work place I have no idea, but I doubt it. Sylvie was not so reluctant in that department. Reading the tome drew my thoughts back to my own not so forward enchantress.

But it wasn’t only with Richard Sylvie played mind games, but he became so over-wrought with lust for her that, in the end, he found he had little resolve about staying true to the woman carrying his baby. He was head over heels with the desire to ravish her for all he was worth. His partner became a focus of this temptress’ attentions as well, as happened with other aspects of Richard’s wider world. If one, on reading the publication, feels that there is much more than meets the eye here, then that person would be correct – but I’m not giving that away. Richard, Leila and Sylvie form a triangle of hedonistic connivance that can only lead to the ruination of one or more of the participants.

‘Sleep With Me’ is much deeper than the page turning light and fluffy summer read alluded to on the front cover of my edition. It certainly doesn’t get right under my skin as another of its praise-singers writes (Maureen Freely of England’s The Guardian); it being set in the UK. It was not up to the standard of ‘You’, the only other of the author’s oeuvre I’ve read. With ‘You’, it is obvious that Briscoe, partner of another very fine author in Charlotte Mendelson, does indeed have the ability to get under the skin – just not with this one.

Author’s website =  http://www.joannabriscoe.com/

It reminded me of the excellent documentary made a few years back, much gonged, about those back-up singers who provided the fire power on the choruses for many of the hit songs that have become embedded in the fabric of our lives. They were unsung, if you’ll excuse the pun. Only now are they receiving some belated recognition. Often they covered for the vocal limitations of the guy or gal front of stage – the ones that couldn’t make it up high. Of course, these anonymous performers all mostly had aspirations to be big-time too. When our own Renee Geyer tried her luck overseas, she became one of the best in the business when her own career didn’t take off in the US – and the stories she now tells of those times behind the limelight! Yes, Kim Echlin’s ‘Under the Visible Life’ reminded me of ’20 Feet From Stardom’. It is well worth seeing on DVD if you possess a love of music. As for the book – well….

The novel tells the story of two gifted musicians who – and it’s no spoiler to write it – never made it either. They were both jazz pianists. One, Afghani-American Misha, due to the openness of her parents mixed marriage, had to flee the country of her birth. Initially this took her to Pakistan where her mother and father were murdered for their brazenness, then on to the US. Katherine, also the result of a mixed marriage, is bought up by her struggling mother in Canada. From an early age both come under the thrall of jazz and the musicians, usually black, that drove that genre. They become gifted on the keyboards and when they eventually encounter each other, a fair way into the tome, they find they have an almost spiritual rapport on their chosen instrument.

At that time, though, jazz was soon to play second fiddle (sorry, just have a compulsion to pun) to new beats emanating from another form of popular music, rock. That, plus the other obstacles that fell before them, meant their careers, together or apart, were very much second tier. They were also women. It was still not easy for their gender to make it in a man’s world. Their trials and tribulations from the immediate post-war years through to the eighties are recounted.

I was attracted to the book by its retro cover, all orange and black. Once taken down from the shelf, the glowing reviews for it inside the front cover ensued a purchase. That it had music at its core was, for me, also a selling point.

But, perhaps because of the type of music they were so enamoured by, or the slow burning manner with which the story unfolded – usually not an issue – I failed to be fully drawn in. Without doubt it’s an interesting read, but my appreciation of it was not up there with those rave recommendations. One critic felt it delivered ‘…a clinic on how to conjure emotions readers didn’t even know they had. This book is nothing short of a masterpiece.’ (Quill and Quire) I could not concur.

This, Kim Echlin’s fourth novel, comes from a writer obviously highly regarded in the land of the maple leaf. She has been praised for her daring in choice of subject matter; her elegiac, beautifully honed prose and her ability to produce story-lines that are uniquely arresting. Is that she failed to move me down to my gender? I wonder.

If you want to be taken into the heart of darkness, to perhaps the vilest country on the face of the planet, then Paul Theroux is your man. Why, in doing so we’ll even find the modern day Mr Kurtz waiting.

The question has to be asked as to why, at age 70, would anyone want to travel alone to somewhere he knew full well was a foul and foetid country? It would be beyond my comprehension. Surely, after eight travel books (as well as a goodly number number of novels), all, to varying degrees, successful, you would be putting your feet up to enjoy a well earned retirement. Many of us have been armchair travellers with him on his adventures to parts of the world it is increasingly unlikely that we ourselves will now ever undertake a visit to. But Theroux is not the type to break out the carpet slippers and port, so instead he heads to one of Africa’s hell-holes. As he writes at the commencement of this book, it wasn’t because he – ‘…was seeking something. I was not seeking anything. I was hurrying away from my routine and my responsibilities and my general disgust with fatuous talk, money talk, money stories, the donkey laughter at dinner parties…Most of all I wanted to go back to Africa to pick up where I’d left off.’

He’d done the other side of the continent for an earlier travelogue and pre-fame had actually survived a stint of teaching in Malawi. He has a certain fondness for the place – or at least for the place it once had been. Now it was time, he figured, to work his way up the other side – although, in the end, he knew when to call it quits and abort what he planned, due to Congolese unrest and extremist Muslin outrages. He’s not a complete fool. But before he did so, he saw the ‘lower depths’ of life in a godforsaken land that few visit of their own volition.

At least, though, he eased his way into it by visiting South Africa and Namibia first. Within his disembarkation country Cape Town was the stepping off point. He was interested to see what had happened to the squatter camps he had visited a decade or so back for another book – squatter camps these days being a blight around all cities in the RSA. He was pleasantly surprised that they seemed so much more liveable these days, a credit to the powers to be, outside aid and the resilience, as well as the ingenuity, of their people. It was only later he realised that, although the camps of his previous time in the Rainbow Nation were now quite reasonable, the problem had only extended outward. When he visited the fringes of cities he found a repetition of what had existed before as more and more South Africans gave up their hardscrabble rural existence for the promise of the big smoke. But, according to Theroux, for most, they had even less hope in these ramshackle, dirty urban eyesores. But, now, believe it or not, they have become part of the nation’s tourist industry – us Westerners are attracted to so called ‘poverty porn’. At least this provides a few souls with gainful employment, guiding bus loads of tourists to see how awfully the ‘other half’ exist. In a few isolated cases it has also had a beneficial effect via some guilt-ridden visitors sinking large sums of money into these places to improve conditions. Largely, though, once the gawkers are returned to their luxury accommodations, the squalor they’ve witnessed is quickly forgotten about as more hedonistic pleasures await. I wonder, this feasting on the misfortune of others, is it, well, ethical?

Crossing into Namibia, the author is at first impressed with the tidiness of some of the townships there, such as Windhoek and Swakopmund, with their Germanic origins and still a noteworthy ex-pat population. And although here the tourist dollar seemingly trickles down a tad, he soon encounters the same ghastly camps, as in RSA, on their outskirts.

At one stage he was delighted to be taken to a bushman’s camp and at last he felt he was seeing the real Africa – the way it used to be before the atrocities of colonisation. There were bare-breasted maidens and he was taken out in the scrub hunting and gathering. After he left he was, for the first time on the trip, relatively content with the state of affairs. Unfortunately his guides took him back to the encampment unannounced and to his dismay he found the previously unencumbered inhabitants to be dressed in western cast-offs, the lads with their caps on backwards, listening to rap emanating from hand held digital devices. What he had witnessed was a show for gullible tourists – like him.

But if this was disillusionment, it was nothing to what he felt coming to Angola. I’ll let PT take it from here for a while – ‘The look of Angola was not just the ugly little town and the slum of shacks, but also the ruin of a brutalised landscape, of the stumps of deforestation and the fields littered with burnt out tanks, of rivers and streams that seemed poisoned – black and toxic. And not the slightest glimpse of any animal but a cow or a cringing dog. In most parts of the southern African bush you at least saw small antelopes or gazelles tittuping in the distance on slender legs. The impala was everywhere, and it was almost impossible to imagine a stretch of savanna without the movement of such creatures. And, wherever there were villages, there were always scavengers, hyenas or intrusive baboons.
But no wild animals existed in the whole of Angola. One effect of the decades long civil war here has been that the animals that had not been eaten by starving people had been blown up by old land mines. The extermination of wild game had been complete. Now and then cows in pastures were shredded by exploding mines, and so were children playing and people taking short cuts through fields.’

And it just goes on and on, the listing of Angola’s woes. It doesn’t appear so, but this nation is one of the continent’s wealthiest, with bountiful deposits of oil, gold and precious gems. But nothing, absolutely nothing, trickles down. All income from these riches lines the pockets of the small ruling elite class which uses goon squads to stamp out any opposition to their avarice. José Eduardo dos Santos rules his country with an iron fist, having done so since 1979. Wikipedia states ‘Dos Santos has been accused of leading one of the most corrupt regimes in Africa by ignoring the economic and social needs of Angola and focusing his efforts on amassing wealth for his family and silencing his opposition, while, nearly 70% of the population lives on less than $2 a day.‘ As head of a craven, abominable regime, he is the modern day Mr Kurtz – fundamentally evil. It’s not pretty reading.

Theroux realises that, although the concentration of wealth may not be so starkly centred on the self-serving few further north, he reasons to travel on in his mission would be pointless – he’d only depressingly encounter more of the same, so he pulls up stumps and retreats home.

Between the writing and publication of this tome, three friends he made on this excursion ended up meeting their end. One, an Australian, was killed by a beloved elephant he worked with; another was murdered for his relative wealth and the last, a worldly and realistic Angolan, died on a dive. Sums it all up actually.

In the end, for PT, there were only glimmers of hope emerging from his journey into darkness, but hope nonetheless. The Rainbow Nation has made great advances, even if there’s a way to go. Namibia has a thriving tourism industry to build something worthwhile around. As for Angola, there is potential if someone can get in there and distribute the squillions it earns from its resources in a more equable manner, but, for the foreseeable future, it will remain a basket case.

Whist the reader cannot be unaffected by all this dire reality Theroux feeds us about the overall situation in this part of Africa, as, with all his books, it always remains interesting. The author is more curmudgeonly these days as one would expect, especially given his destination. His latest, ‘Deep South’, based around travelling the back roads of that part of his own nation, is his tenth travel book and awaits on my shelves. Maybe that one will be less doom and gloom.

There will come a time when his meanderings around the world will cease, given he’s now 75. Pity, he’s taken me on some great rides as I have reclined in my armchair or snuggled under the doona.

Author’s website = http://www.paultheroux.com/

The frontier wars around our country have been a cause, in recent decades, for fervent debate between historians, played out in the media and in books. On our island the years of the so-called Black War caused fear on both sides of the conflict, but ‘war’, given the numbers involved, stretches the definition. Rather, it seems to have been a series of skirmishes, frightening nonetheless; often violently savage for the combatants and civilian populations. It was a battle the First Tasmanians were never going to win, given their decreasing population, internecine warfare, the ravages of disease and lack of fire-power. This was followed by a sad-beyond-words demise for them, only to rise as a recognised entity to again be a force to be reckoned with, in another sense, in more recent times.

Murray Johnson and Ian McFarlane, both steeped in the history of our first peoples, trace their story further in the one volume than has previously been the case, to my knowledge. Much of what ‘Van Diemen’s Land’ contains has been covered before, but the authors take the history from pre-contact times right up to the modern day – in fact to the recent controversy over the Brighton Bypass. The tome included accounts of the atrocious treatment of the Aborigines by the Bass Strait sealers around the time when the first European settlements on the island were being established; the second ‘war’ on the island between the local North West clans and the VDL company which lasted long after hostilities had ceased in other areas; as well as what happened on the islands after the cessation of Wybalenna. This last section was particularly welcome as it covered a stage that I knew scant detail about, a period from 1850 to1970 being accounted for. The traditional story, as I learnt at school many moons ago, ended with Oyster Cove and the death of Truganini. We now know, of course, that the presence of people of Aboriginal descent had a history that continued on.

All of the book is couched in prose that is eminently readable, patently well researched – as well as being, in parts, immensely disturbing. It also introduced me to some new players. The two Georges (Arthur and Robinson) are well known, as are Truganini and William Lanne. Those interested in the history of our state will know of the dark side of John Batman, thanks to Rohan Wilson’s novel ‘The Roving Party’. On the other side there are the resistance leaders such as Woorrady, Mannalargenna, Umerrah and the import, Musquito. And in present times there is a warrior of a different nature, Michael Mansell. But the newcomers to the list are as equal in fascination, as far as I am concerned, as the aforementioned.

Firstly the two scribes introduced me to the combination of Gilbert Robertson and Black Tom. Robertson (1794–1851), coloured colonialist and newspaper editor, was the son of a West Indies planter and his slave mistress. He was raised and educated by his well-connected grandfather in Scotland. Robertson arrived in Van Diemen’s Land in 1822 as a free settler. In 1828 he led the first ‘roving party’ to bring in Aborigines who had been waging attacks on white settlers. He was appointed chief constable of the Richmond district, but was remarkable in that he saw the Aborigines as patriots engaged in a war of resistance against the invaders. This is despite the fact that his party may have killed outright a number a number of them. He incurred the wrath of the establishment by standing up for the rights of the indigenous people, arguing that they should not be hung for their ‘crimes’, but treated as prisoners-of-war – not a popular opinion at the time. Given that, in at least one case he was successful in saving a life. As a whole the roving parties, with Batman to the fore, generally killed more than they bought in, even after Arthur put a bounty on those captured to be taken, initially, into incarceration. Robertson’s relationship with the Governor was frosty, but he absolutely despised Robinson. Robertson was the first to suggest a conciliator be appointed to go into the bush and peacefully bring out those remaining original inhabitants still scattered around the island. He obviously saw himself in that role. Arthur dismissed this idea, preferring the notoriously unsuccessful notion of the Black Line. Later, as it was obvious what a folly the Line was, Robinson put himself forward as Protector and swore it was his idea alone, even if his eminence vaguely remembered he had heard it all before. Robertson was livid, particularly when his right hand men were stripped from his service to go bush with Robinson; the latter having convinced the Governor to give him the gig. One of these was Black Tom. As editor of a local newspaper Robertson vented his spleen, with the result he was several times imprisoned for libel. All of this angst caused him to quit Van Diemen’s Land to become the agricultural superintendent for the Norfolk Island penal station. He was a newspaper editor in the Western District of Victoria when he died of a sudden heart attack in the middle of a heated political campaign.

His off-sider, Black Bob, was a white-raised Aboriginal who became involved in Musquito’s rampages early in the conflict. When captured he was spared the noose and sent to Macquarie Harbour to serve time. After his release, he became a skilled tracker for Robertson. He was then ‘seconded’ to Robinson’s mob as they trawled the back blocks for native inhabitants. He eventually ran out of steam at the fledging settlement of Emu Bay where he died of dysentery in 1832.

The north-western frontier features again through a female warrior, a Tommeginner woman, Walyer. She’s been sometimes described as the Tasmanian Amazon. Born in the Table Cape area, she spent her teenage years with the Straits sealers; whether willingly or abducted is open to conjecture. There she picked up a command of English. She later returned to her home area with a mini-arsenal of firearms. It’s possible she first used weapons on her own people during her time on the islands, but on returning back to the mainland it seems she was ready to inflict some pain on the whites for their many injuries to her kind, although again historians are conflicted on her exact motivation. She was soon joined by like-minded souls to become the only female resistance leader ever recorded on the island. But she didn’t evade the sealers for long and they caught up with her in 1830 – or again, did she flee back to them in response to the whites, none to happy with her after her rampages along the mainland coast, turning up the heat. When she attempted to kill one of their number the sealers gave her up to the authorities. Robinson, whose progress had been impacted on by this amazing woman, on hearing of this, stated in his diaries that it was ‘…a matter of considerable importance to the peace and tranquillity of those districts where she and her formidable coadjutors had made themselves so conspicuous in their wanton and barbarous aggression‘. It was, he thought, a ‘…most fortunate thing that this woman is apprehended and stopped in her murderous career…The dire atrocities she would have occasioned would be the most dreadful that can possibly be conceived.’ She died in 1831 of influenza. At a time when Aboriginal women were regarded by most whites they had contact with as chattels to be used for sexual purposes and traded, her defiance was remarkable, despite much of her story being unclear.

Even if they didn’t become warrior-women like Walyer, there were others of the female gender prominent in the history of these times. Richard Flanagan wrote a novel based around the unfortunate Mathinna; Dolly Dalrymple’s achievements are well chronicled as are those of Fanny Cochrane, who made the first sound recordings of her people’s language. Another great voice for the First Tasmanians – and whose story I had not previously encountered – was Lucy Beedon, the Queen of the Isles. She initially came to light when Francis Nixon, the first Anglican bishop of Van Diemen’s Land, visited the isles of eastern Bass Strait in 1856. He was most impressed with her as she had taken on the responsibility of educating the islander children. Daughter of sealer Thomas Beedon and his partner Emerenna, she was schooled on mainland Tasmania whilst her parents were settled on Badger Island. Here she embraced the Christian religion, learned to read and write as well as, eventually, developing a head for business. When she returned to the Furneaux Group she became a force to be reckoned with by all those ‘outsiders’ trying to take advantage of her people, especially in the dealings over the mutton birding rights. By her early twenties she was already a formidable woman due to her massive size and intelligence. She became lessee of Badger island, remained unmarried all her life and devoted herself to managing the islanders’ financial affairs. During her time in the area she transformed it from its perception as being populated byan idle, alcohol-sodden population to one of sober industry where, most importantly, women were treated as equals. Eventually her duties took her away from teaching so she set up a school with an employed instructor. Family fragmentation became, for the most, a feature of the past for now, under her guidance, a future could be had without leaving home. It was a sad day when she passed on, age 58, in 1886.

There are so many other interesting ‘characters’ to be met between the covers of ‘Van Diemen’s Land’. Read of Deloraine’s Paddy Heagon, alleged to have possessed a swivel gun (a small type of cannon) to dispense with the local first peoples. Discover what was the shocking incident that took place at Cooee Point, near Burnie, that almost blew the lid off the VDL Company’s covert policy of extermination in those parts it held sway over. What was the impact of Bishop Montgomery (who produced a famous son you may of heard of) on Aboriginal affairs during his tenure in Tasmania? What was the cause of the feud that schoolteacher Edward Stephens, half addled with drink, had with the community’s policeman on Cape Barren Island to caused shots to be fired? How was it possible for the islanders to cope for so long without any modern conveniences, or any assistance from the powers to be? And in these pages you can read stories of the forced removals of children from their families – another tale sad-beyond-words. Lastly, there was that terrible word – ‘octoroon’.

But times change and in our new millennium, to be of Aboriginal ancestry, is a badge of honour. There is no more of that nonsense of Truganini being the last of her kind, as was so often referred to in school curriculum when I was growing up. Some of what was so wrongfully taken away has been reinstated, although much more needs to be done. Conciliation is afoot on our island, as it is on the big one across the water. Hopefully that will soon be ratified in the constitution. The two authors are to be commended for their wide ranging account of a story that should never be lost in the mists again. It is an account that the venerable Henry Reynolds has rightly described as, ‘A study that will remain essential and relevant for years to come’.

He’s a greasy little sleazeball, is the young Charlie Manson – as portrayed in ‘Aquarius’. But he is seemingly a charismatic figure to the impressionable young maidens who bound around him. They hang out and do the drug thing at his urban commune – such a happening place. Eventually he coerces his teenage acolytes to do deeds for him that he perceives will contribute to him reaching his destiny – later on these will become the epitome of evil. For now his vicious streak is already starting to show – he’s not a person you cross without expecting retribution. I’ve only watched one episode of the series to date. It seemed somewhat cheesy in places, but I’ll stick with it. For you see it stars David Duchovny as your stereotypical rumpled cop, and after ‘Californication’, I am besotted by David D and the roles he makes his own.

But, I suppose, in the strictest sense, Gippsland’s Hope Farm, back in the eighties, was not a commune. It labelled itself an ashram, and I presume there is a difference, despite both being filled with a loose idea about boundaries within personal relationships. In Frew’s eponymous novel the height of flower power is long past, but a group of disparate, mostly ageing, hippies are hanging on at Hope Farm. The place has seen better days, as have most of its communards, but in the novel they are being introduced to New Age mumbo-jumbo by another charismatic figure – Miller. In contrast to Manson, his intent was purer, but still he seemed to have an effect on the ladies, managing to wheedle money out of them. He’s a big hairy bear of a man. Ishtar was soon in his thrall.

Mostly, in Peggy Frew’s ‘Hope Farm’, the hardscrabble life at the commune was seen through the eyes of an adult Silver, casting her mind back to her childhood there. Then she wanted a normal existence and she wanted a loving touch, but what she received from her distant mother, Ishtar, was a transitory existence. She moved from one ashram to another as her parent followed her dreams and men of uncertain quality. But at least at Hope Farm it all improved somewhat for Silver. She meets a mysterious boy down by the creek and he becomes a yearned-for friend of sorts. At the farm she experiences her first crush on a guy who, in turn, is besotted by Ishtar. And in the end an abandoned mine-shaft became Silver’s salvation, leading to an anchored life.

Frew displayed, with her first novel, ‘House of Sticks’, an ability to present a story of the human condition that looks at fractured relationships amongst urban Australians who haven’t quite made it into the mainstream. ‘Hope Farm’ is a very strong follow-up. It kept this reader engaged from cover to cover. I’m not completely sure if the device of having the diary entries of semi-literate Ishtah, interspersed throughout most of Silver’s narrative, is completely convincing. That aside, Frew has shown that she is a vibrant new voice on our recent national condition, conveyed in fiction form.

In the end Miller was no Charlie Manson. The hold he had over those around him was no where near as total as Manson’s, so errors along the way soon caused his world start to unravel. Once he lost control of those he expected to pander to his mental well-being – they being never fully convinced in the first place – his end is inglorious. The put-upon figure of Ian, the lad by the creek, comes out of it all very well as maybe the hero of the piece. Help arrives for Silver from an unlikely source. Frew is skilled with juggling all the threads and is considerate to her readers in not allowing any to dangle. She leaves her surely growing list of fans well sated. I like her for that. Roll on novel three.

From the preface of ‘Modern Love’,- ‘When John and Sunday Reed purchased their semi-rural property on the outskirts of Melbourne in 1931, they could hardly imagine that eighty years later it would be the site of a renowned museum and widely regarded as the birthplace of Australian modernism. The intricate way in which the Reeds’ lives unfolded has given rise to beguiling mythology – the romanticised tale of Heide and its bohemian inhabitants – that has long captured the imagination of the public and scholars alike.’

Heide’s mythology has certainly beguiled me over the years. I thought I knew a fair bit about it. For a while I toyed with the idea of a story, written from a child’s perspective – a watcher; drawn to the very different people she espied at the farmstead; reporting on the comings and goings there on the property then fringing Melbourne. Nothing came of it, being replaced by other fascinations in my post-retirement world. Then Emily Bitto’s book ‘The Strays’ up and won the Vogel, the award for female writers, last year. This authorly bar-owner (of Heartattack and Vine, near Readings in Carlton) had the honour of having this, her first book, published by Affirm Press’ new fiction list. She, too, is obviously steeped in that aforementioned mystique of the Reeds. What she has come up with, though, is a paralleling story of the Trenthams, a similar couple who operated a sort of open house for their ‘strays’. These were bods of artistic intent, picked up along the way. As it turned out, the fictional Trenthams were a far more conservative couple than the Reeds, as I discerned from ‘Modern Love’. Evan T is not John Reed. The former was an artist with the temperament that stereotypically goes with those taking to that vocation. Reed, a man of independent means (wife, Sunday, possessed a silver spoon background as well), was an artistic mentor – a word he disliked – of talent; a sometime lawyer and a writer/editor to boot. Unlike the Reeds, who adopted Joy Hester/Albert Tucker’s child, the couple of Bitto’s imagination had three daughters before semi-adopting ‘The Stray’s’ narrator, Lily. The latter befriended one intriguing daughter, Eva, with, in doing so, joining the family’s fluctuating circle. The matriarch, Helena, was a charismatic figure, letting all the children have the run of the place. But as the quartet mature, sexual attraction raises its head and the real world intrudes on Eden. Bitto traces the narrative through to present-day times. Whereas once often reviled, by the artistic establishment, the pair eventually become the darlings of modernism – a resurgence of Aussie art that had its flowering in the forties as war raged around the world. It petered out under the stifling conservatism of the Menzies years when many of our best deserted for the more progressive UK scene. Finally they become lauded gods as they were embraced by the mainstream in the latter decades of last century. Some of the events that affected the Trenthams are factual, such as when, in 1937 RGM, as Attorney-General, formed plans for an Academy of Art to provide a bastion against modern, ie communist, influences, then gaining some traction locally. The Reeds, as well as fictionally, the Trenthams, were outraged by this and were at the vanguard of opposition, forming the Contemporary Art Society (CAS). This period of discourse has prominence in both publications. As one would expect, Lesley Harding’s and Kendrah Morgan’s ‘Modern Love – The Lives of John and Sunday Reed’ is full of the who’s-who of the art world during their lifetime. As well there are other prominent identities, one such being Doc Evatt – a friend and valued confidante. He gets a mention in the fictional take as well.

‘The Strays’ is described in its advertorial blurb as ‘…a beautifully written novel, lyrical and wondrous. Emily Bitto is an elegant writer who knows how to sustain suspense.’ This humble scribe would definitely agree. The book is structured beautifully and her wordsmithery is quite sublime in places. The reader is led through the vicissitudes that play out for the Trenthams and their four girls, if we count Lily, as the years advance. It was a fascinating read, a positive page-turner. Ms Bitto’s follow-up will be eagerly anticipated.

Fascinating as well is ‘Modern Love’. What an incredible story – if this was fiction it would be difficult to believe. I ploughed my way at, for me, a very fast clip through it over a couple of days. I was transfixed. I had prior knowledge of some of the goings on at Heide – Sunday’s affair with Sidney Nolan, for instance – but, dear me, the sexual machinations that went on at that place and within their circle. Sidney’s passion for Mrs Reed was only the tip of the iceberg. It seems Sunday had an attraction for both genders. There were also some other intriguing combinations involving her, as well as some other pairings, mentioned in passing, that would be interesting to investigate further. The authors, both curators at Heide, did state that they refrained from using some particularly sensitive material available to them, so ‘Modern Love’ will not be the last word on the Reeds – that will have to wait till the parties concerned are further in the past. But this tome didn’t only dwell on the politics of attraction. The contribution the Reeds made to Australian art, just as it was rediscovering its own uniqueness, was astronomical and fully examined here.

Other enlightenments provided by the publication included the damage the constant threat of conscription did to the Heide residents during the war years. There was also the role of the couple in the Ern Malley Affair and the way the pair morphed from being privileged gilded youths to the best known representatives of Bohemian free-spiritedness our country has produced. Then there were the vast array of household names (art-wise today) who succumbed to the bucolic charms of their household. It was also interesting that there were Tasmanian connections as well. John R was born here. His family owned a substantial pile, by our standards, at Mt Pleasant, outside Launceston and Nolan also spent time on the island. Examined were the trips the Reeds made to other parts of Oz and overseas. Then there was the curious question of John’s sexuality – just what did he receive in turn from the sexual dalliances of his wife. Finally, heart-breakingly, was the battle to keep their adopted son on the relative straight and narrow before his tragic end.

And to join it all full circle, it was more than interesting to read Emily Bitto’s review of ‘Modern Love’, as published recently in the Fairfax Press. She points to the thoroughness of the research involved and its readability, even if, from her point of view, nothing earth-shatteringly new was added to their legend. ‘Modern Love’, she concurs, had all the rigour of an academic text, but its lightness of touch ensures it will reach a wider audience as well. There is a judicious use of photographic images, some quite touchingly intimate, bringing to life the major players. Added are some of the seminal works of art of the period. These include paintings by Sam Alyeo (Sunday’s initial lover at Heide), Moya Dyring’s beautiful portrait of her, Adrian Lawlor’s ‘John Reed’ and several notable daubings by Joy Hester who, with Albert Tucker, are prominent in the book’s pages. There’s Charles Blackman, John Perceval, Mirka Moya and Arthur Boyd featuring as well. They are all participants in Heide’s tale, a riveting account of a couple whose iconic status in the cultural history of Australia is unrivalled. And I submit that it will only grow in stature and mystique – there’s that word again – as time progresses.

And for this punter, there’s only one thing left to do now that I am fully versed in the life and times of the Reeds, thanks to Bitto, Harding and Morgan – and that’s to visit Heide myself. I’ve been promising myself to do it each time I visit Yarra City, but the transport logistics to actually getting there so far have proven too daunting. I’ll eventually sort it out and make it – one day.

Heide Museum of Modern Art website = https://www.heide.com.au/

Emily Bitto’s review of ‘Modern Love’ = http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/modern-love-by-lesley-harding-and-kendrah-morgan-the-couple-at-the-heart-of-the-magic-circle-20151027-gkiuo0.html

In summer it’s gridlock on the roads into and through Cornwall. To cope, most of the little seaside villages that charm – and even if we may never visit them they still do (‘Doc Martin’) – have giant holding areas on their outskirts. From them holiday makers/day trippers are then taken by bus into into these tiny, narrow-streeted places to witness their joys. It was at one such that Bill Bryson met Matthew Facey.

The latter was a parking attendant at the facility outside Mevagissey. Bill had endured an interminable drive into the duchy – Cornwall is not a county. He was heartily sick of constant hold-ups on the freeway so, on the spur of the moment, decided a quiet country lane into the Cornish resort would be preferable. Mistake. It was bumper to bumper chockers and it took him forever to get to its carpark. On arrival, not only was it packed to the gunnels, but there was a long queue waiting. Bill realised it was pointless to wait as to do so would mean he wouldn’t make his ultimate destination before nightfall – but, of course, he was trapped. So it was Matthew F to the rescue. He orchestrated the author’s about turn. In their manoeuvrings Bill discovered Facey did camera-pointing on the side. Bryson resolved to check out his rescuer’s on-line gallery and was impressed with what he saw. Turns out he is one of Cornwall’s most esteemed snappers and his work is quite lovely. I know. I checked it out too.

Needless to say, as with all of Bill Bryson’s publications, ‘The Road to Little Dribbling’ is a gem. It’s a belated sequel to the tome that set him on the way – ‘Notes From a Small Country’. And it’s also a celebration, being that it’s twenty years since that break-through publication descended on us, making his name. This latest offering was to give Bill an opportunity to note and riff on all the changes in those years to the places he visited first time around – or at least that was his agent’s notion of what he should do. Bill, after some musing, decided he would take a different approach. He resolved to travel from the south to the north of the UK – but taking as his guide a vague following of longest possible straight line that can be drawn between those two compass points that doesn’t cross any water of the salted kind. We should emphasise the ‘vaguely’ bit. In the end he sort of criss-crossed the Bryson Line, working his way up from south to north – with numerous side excursions en route. The result of all this is an engrossing, funny and at times, even worrying read. Worrying because of the stupidity of humankind – numerous examples of which Bill is only too happy to point out to his readers.

There’s a lovely review of the Anglo-American’s effort this time around, to be found on-line, by Richard Glover – himself having received some recent kudos as a writer of memoirs. RG claims there is a game of one-upmanship played by Bill B devotees revolving around which is the funniest passage to be found in all of author’s now numerous list of titles. These Brysonists are able to reel their anecdotes off word perfect. The reviewer cites some examples. It’s worth reading. I will never get out of my own mind the image of our man as a new arrival in the UK. He fronts up in Dover, landing on the doorstep of a prospective bed and breakfast and greeting its host with his underpants firmly attached to his noggin. The self-deprecating description of him reluctantly dipping his toe into the Pacific Ocean at Bondi, in his account of his travels in Oz, is pretty memorable too. He’d read of all the creatures in it that are out to kill unsuspecting bathers and doubted his prospects of survival – despite the thousands of fellow humans frolicking off the same stretch of strand. And, likewise, he doesn’t let us down in ‘…Little Dribbling’. He regales us with the account, early on, of how he bravely, without fear, walked up to the counter, during an infrequent visit to a McDonalds, intending to place a family order. Despite numerous attempts to get it right and having to deal with a clueless and incompetent pimpled dolt taking and entering said order, he is left enraged and had to be led away quivering by his ever-patient wife before blood was spilt. It was vintage Bryson and the choked chortles I was emitting reading it led my lovely lady to come post haste from another room as she feared I was suffering some form of apoplectic fit.

And also, with this wordsmith, there is always a background story to most of the sights he sees. One that particularly intrigues this time was the snippet of information he gave about a Taswegian. In the 1860s a railway company, the Midland, was searching for a new route into Scotland. Competitors had taken up the two seaboard options, so the controllers of the new player decided to construct right up the middle, receiving parliamentary approval to do so. Trouble was, right up the middle meant a section of the Pennines that was particularly inhospitable. The company had a go, but soon realised building a railway there was such a challenge it would more than likely bankrupt them. They asked the country’s lawmakers to give them permission to desist. As this was against the provisions of the contract they were refused and the company was forced to plough on. Fortunately they found someone willing to accept responsibility for the completion of the task. I’ll let Bill take up the story at this point:-
‘Almost nothing is known about Sharland other than that he came from Tasmania and was only in his early twenties. The immensity of the task confronting him was almost unimaginable and made all the harder by the privations of labouring in the wilderness. Sharland slept in a wagon and often worked for hours in drenching rain or driving snow. Even more remarkable, he did all this while suffering acutely from tuberculous. Inevitably, it caught up with him and, with his work almost finished, he retired to Torquay at the age of just twenty-five. He died soon after, having never seen a train run on the line he helped to create.’
That line, through the Yorkshire Dales, is now regarded as the most dramatic and scenic in the UK – but Bill’s right. I checked to see if the ether held any more on Charles Stanley Sharland and came up with zilch extra information, although there does seem to have been a UK book about him back in 2012.

Bryson has been chided by some critics for being so crabby in this latest release. He is very unhappy in many sections, dropping the f-bomb with unprecedented frequency in his ire. His piss-offedness knows no bounds as he vents his spleen at the state of humanity in the world around him. But in places he still finds the old-fashioned Englishness of the sort that first attracted him back in ‘Notes From a Small Country’ – a quality he feels, to his distress, is fast disappearing. But his delight in renewing acquaintanceship with it in some locations is palpable in his writing.

In ‘…Little Dribbling’ he indulges in a fair amount of railing about the pressure the money-makers are placing on government to do away with the famous green belts of British cities – they want to cover them with mass housing and already are having some success in shearing off the green bits to allow this to happen. The author is most vociferous, persistent and eloquent in placing his arguments down on paper as to why continuing to do so would be a travesty. He laments the increasingly ‘Black Booksian’ nature of the service to be found in the retail outlets of his adopted country, contrasting it with the intrusive inanity of customer service in his birth nation. Which is worse is the question. He produces an extended list of his pet hates at one stage – these include people who say ‘stonking’; salmon coloured trousers and the men who wear them; the parents of any child named Tarquin and Meryl Streep when she’s being ‘adorable’. He despises the new ‘loudness’ to be found around a country once noted for its quietude, again likening it to what’s always been in the brasher US of A. He blames the mobile phone into which moronic chavs have to shout on the public transport and streets of the once more restrained UK. And don’t get him stated on the Chinese made tat that passes for souvenirs found in tourist hot-spots all around the country.

But amongst much ranting he gives us some marvellous yarns as well. There’s the story of the invention of the public park by the redoubtable Joseph Paxton and how a visit to it in Birmingham inspired the creation of NYC’s Central Park as a result. And he gives us a close encounter with a Beatle. He was gobsmacked at one stage to discover his home bordered on Ringo Starr’s estate and that his wife was encountering the legendary drummer in their village all the time, conveying to a stunned husband that she found him ‘…quite a nice man’ in their chats. Bryson, to his disgust, never laid eyes on him when out and about. There’s the tale of how the tongue twister ‘She sells sea shells by the sea shore’ became part of the parlance – and just who the real Eliza Doolittle truly was.

Spending time with Bill Bryson and one of his books is like shooting the breeze with an old mate. There’s only been one of his oeuvre I haven’t taken to and that’s the one they made the recent movie about. There are a handful of writers these days I would term global, as opposed to national, living treasures. I think this bloke has just about reached that stage.

Bill B’s website = http://www.billbrysonbooks.com/

Richard Glover’s review = http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/road-to-little-dribbling-review-bill-bryson-has-another-romp-through-england-20151020-gkcjbr.html

The headline described them as ‘Pungent Observations on the Twists of Modern Life’. Pungent? Well, yes. She pulls no punches, does Tegan Bennett Daylight, with some of her descriptiveness – the death of a friend; the truly awful taste of that diabolical elixir we all drank back in our formative years (Brandivino); the fragility of friendship as we first attempt to reject individuality to be accepted by the herd. And one could not fault the writing.

The headline capped a review by critic and editor Peter Pierce. He lauds the author of these ten tales for being a ‘…morally astute, technically adroit, anti-formulaic and unsentimental practitioner of the short story craft.’ Tegan BD is all that, but for me there was something missing. Perhaps Pierce summed it up when he stated the collection exhibits ‘…virtuous skills but no flashiness throughout.’ He intended it as a compliment, but is that what it needed to have more of an impact on this reader – a dollop of flashiness?

I initially discovered this writer some time ago. I cannot recall which of her previous novels (‘Bombora’, ‘What Falls Away’, ‘Safety’) it was – too many years have passed and I cannot locate the record. It may have been the first listed as I have a vague recollection it centred around surfing. I do know I liked it very much and made a mental note to watch out for future publications. But sadly, they have been a while in the making. ‘Bombora’ was twenty years ago – it won the Vogel. ‘Safety’, almost a decade.

The stories in her latest reportedly did contain linkages with past books. And in some the characters make repeat appearances. They are slices of life taken from various stages of the journey we all make – childhood and through the teens to adulthood. A few characters are seen, as from above, in multiple stages. Conclusions, deliberately, are sometimes open to more possibility for, after all, that is life. They’re not sewn up neatly as a package. Just when this peruser was getting to know a protagonist and settling in, though, often a tale would terminate and we were on to the next. But I will say that with what the author has started here there is plenty of fodder for an extension into the longer form. There are novels awaiting within, Ms Daylight.

Despite the coolness of her observations, for me, this offering did not fully satisfy. Talent abounds – that’s easy to discern – and I do trust it is not another decade before the next title is placed on a shelf in a book store to tempt me.

The author’s website = http://teganbennettdaylight.com/