Caring For Country by Billy Griffiths

Recently I read something or saw something about the Ranger program in the Northern Territory, which led me to Billy Griffiths report in the Griffith Review Edition 56 | Millennials Strike Back | April 2017, Caring for country: The place where the Dreaming changed shape.

It's fascinating and encouraging to see the various ways that Indigenous peoples around the world are maintaining faith with their old ways as they incorporate the parts of modern life that suit them as well. The Ranger programs running in the NT are all about teaching the young how to care for country and get in touch with their culture. To make their work easier, they now use GPS, satellite imagery, aerial photography and other modern technologies. They also learn how to create new stories, art, dance and songlines that reflect their modern lives.

The other emerging story, gaining traction in the articles I'm reading, is the capacity of the Aborigines of Australia to evolve and adapt to seismic change over the 65 000 years they have lived on this continent. From the extinction of the megafauna to surviving the last ice age. White settlement is just one more thing to survive, adapt to and incorporate. The (white) story is also slowly evolving - from seeing the Aborigines as a culture doomed to die out in the face of a (superior) larger civilisation - to celebrating the longest living culture in the world surviving against all odds. Two hundred years in the context of 65 000 may seem like a mere blimp in time, but the consequences of our 200 years together impact all our daily interactions and understandings. We can marvel at the 65 000 years but it is today that we have to live in.

How does the NT ranger program figure in all of this?

Billy Griffiths takes us to Djinkarr, a small outstation in western Arnhem Land. He claims that these small, remote, poorly connected settlements are a good thing, (which flies in the face of the usual white conviction). He says there are 'overwhelming benefits to having people living on country. People sustain country, and country in turn sustains people.'

The country also gets a lot of love from Griffiths:

Small fires streak the savanna beneath me, as the land is worked and cleaned. The gentle smoke on the horizon is sign of a healthy country. In the distance, disappearing into a soft haze, lies the rugged stone country of the Arnhem Land Plateau. The plane wobbles over the mouth of the Liverpool River, where saltwater meets fresh, and descends towards a thin ribbon of grey on a cleared patch of thick, earthy red: the international airport. On one side of the airstrip, a few dozen houses cluster around a football oval; on the other, a neat grid delineates the newest suburb, called simply ‘New Sub’. Maningrida, as our destination is known, takes its name from the Kunibídji phrase Mane djang karirra: ‘the place where the Dreaming changed shape’.

This particular essay came about thanks to Griffiths involvement in a short-term, independent art and environment initiative known as The Arnhembrand Project. The aim was to tell 'healthy country' stories through paint and performance, science and oral history. The rangers play an important role in creating new stories about what is happening to their country.

The Djelk IPA is a vast estate, extending across monsoon rainforests, tropical savannas, grasslands, wetlands, sea country and stone country – ....Buffaloes, pigs, feral cats and cane toads have trampled, chewed, rubbed and wallowed their way across a delicate ecosystem, destroying habitats, spreading weeds, muddying springs, transforming the vegetation and exacerbating the eroding impact of wildfire. The effect on native species has been devastating. Their decline and extinction have deprived the Bininj of bush tucker as well as delivering a more existential loss: the displacement of totemic beings from their ancestral homes.

The rangers are using cool fires to manage the land, they are systemically clearing the land of weeds such as mimosa and they are culling the buffalo herds that are devastating the land and the local fauna.

The outstation movement and ranger programs have been evolving since the 1970's as small groups left the townships, failing due to illness and alcoholism and lack of purpose. They felt 'driven by a responsibility to return to country, to tend to sacred sites and to work the land through fire, ceremony, hunting and gathering.'

Betty Meehan, anthropologist, has spent her career working with various Aboriginal groups around Australia. In the 70's she was in the NT with the Blyth River people, where she claimed that this was not 'the end of the Dreaming', instead this was the place where the Dreaming was changing shape.

The late Lofty Bardayal Nadjamerrek (Wamud Namok), an Aboriginal elder from Manangrida said that the biggest threat to the environment is ‘empty country’: ‘not having people on country to look after it’.

The outstations, combined with the ranger services, are the key to avoiding the neglect that comes from empty country. ‘Outstations are not about the old ways, they are the birthplace of the new ways for us.’

The ranger program has not only benefited the local environment, it has also reintroduced pride and purpose into the community with kids staying at school longer to qualify for the internships. The flow on effects for health, mental health and the local economy seem self-evident.

There have been numerous articles and programs highlighting the ranger programs in the NT, Queensland and WA and even more websites devoted to sharing the news about local programs. A few are listed below.

ABC News | 25 Nov 2018 | Indigenous rangers in training.
The Conversation | 15 Jan 2018 | Indigenous ranger programs are working in Queensland.
SBS News | 14 Feb 2018 | WA gets all female Indigenous ranger teams.
Njanjma Aboriginal Corporation
Warddeken Land Management
APN Cape York
Pulu Indigenous Protected Area
Western Mulga

I'm glad I could end #AusReadingMonth with a good news story.

Image source

Facts:

• Billy Griffiths is an historian and lecturer in Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies. 
• Deep Time Dreaming: Uncovering Ancient Australia (Black Inc., 2018)
• Winner of the Ernest Scott Prize 
• The John Mulvaney Book Award
• The Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction
• 2019 Book of the Year at the NSW Premier’s History Awards.

Trace Fossils by Alice Gorman

I plan to read Alice Gorman's Dr Space Junk vs the Universe (2019) in the very near future. Knowing I wouldn't have time to feature it during this year's #AusReadingMonth, I decided to search for any other examples of her essay writing instead, to give us all a taste of what's to come.

Trace Fossils: The Silence of Ediacara, the shadow of uranium popped in the Griffith Review 55: State of Hope | Jan 2017 - an edition dedicated entirely to South Australia. It also appeared on The Conversation: Friday essay | 3 Feb 2017.

I'm rather fascinated by the whole idea of space archaeology (the archaeology of orbital debris, terrestrial launch sites, and satellite tracking stations), which is the field that Gorman lectures in at Flinders University. However, she began her career working on Indigenous stone tool analysis and the Aboriginal use of bottle glass after European settlement, which is where this essay is coming from.

My first question was what are trace fossils? Gorman describes them as - the preserved impressions left by the passage of a living body through sediment.

Wikipedia expanded this by saying that they are impressions or other preserved signs of activity left by animals, plants, protists, and bacteria. These can be tubes, lines, scratches, or other features, like dinosaur footprints or shrimp burrows. They are created in soft sediments and have been found in rocks as far back as the Late Precambrian (2 billion to half a billion years ago).

Apparently South Australia, around the remote areas of Woomera and the Nullarbor Plain, have plenty of trace fossils on offer. This area was once covered by glaciers during various ice ages followed by seas as the glaciers retreated and the earth warmed up. Storm surges caused an influx of sediment that embedded fern fronds and other sea creatures. Segmented worms were squashed, curled up on the bottom of the sea bed.

As Gondwanaland was created these old sea beds were pushed up into mountain ranges.

Which brings us to the Ediacaran Period, a geological period I had never heard of before. It began 635 million years ago and ended 542 million years ago with the Cambrian explosion of animal life. It's a relatively 'new' period, only receiving official status in 2004. Ediacaran fossils were first discovered by Reg Sprigg in 1946 in the Ediacaran Hills, Flinders Ranges. They indicate the earliest forms of complex life on earth.

Now you know!

Gorman provides a very readable, easy to follow potted history of the area to current times. From giant megafauna and Aboriginal life, the arrival of colonists and cattle, the hunt for uranium, a rocket testing range to nuclear bomb testing.

Aboriginal people became a trace fossil in the land deemed empty – hidden in plain sight. Kokatha, Pitjantjatjara, Adnyamathanha and Barngarla people lived on missions around the state, and gathered in coastal towns that offered them the employment that the rocket range had promised but didn’t deliver. 

At this time, white Australians thought Aboriginal occupation had been a few thousand years at most, and many believed Aboriginal people were dying out – the inevitable result of the “stone age” being superseded by the “space age”.

Visiting these areas devastated by livestock and human intervention is a sobering experience, yet Gorman is constantly fascinated by the small details, the junk, if you like, that is left behind. Whether it's a crushed fern fossil from a billion years ago, a twisted coke can in the sand or twisty ties left tied to a fence around a nuclear test site. They all tell a story.

Modern uses for this remote area of SA now include detention centres, farms for giant wind turbines and tourism.

the same apparent “emptiness” that brought rockets, nuclear tests and detention centres now attracts commercial interest in storing nuclear waste from other nations. It’s the end of a cycle that starts with the mining and export of Australian uranium. The redistribution of uranium is a very Anthropocene process, part of the dismantling and reassembling of the planet.

As a long-time fanatic of geology, archaeology, anthropology and evolutionary studies, this tantalising but brief glimpse into the life and times of the desert of South Australia has stirred some dormant microbes of excitement and intellectual stimulation within me.

It's funny (peculiar) how only last week I was considering my collection of fossil books as a possibility for the Non-fiction November | Be the Expert week. Ever since, I've had these vague stirrings of longing to reread the Leakey family bio and the various books on Pompeii, Troy, Charles Darwin, fossils and evolution that I have tucked away somewhere.

Curiously my current fiction read, The Garden of Fugitives by Ceridwen Dovey also has a Pompeian archaeology story strand. Finding Gorman's Trace Fossil essay was obviously meant to be.

If you can recommend any other books about archaeological digs, fossils or evolution, I would love to hear about them in the comments below.

Image source

Favourite Quote: deep time is always waiting to burst through the crusts of the surface.

Facts:

• To find out how Gorman became a space archaeologist, you can read about it on her Dr Space Junk blog.
• Trace Fossils was the winner of the the Bragg UNSW Press Prize for Science Writing 2017

All Happy Families: A Memoir by Herve Le Tellier

All Happy Families wasn't the memoir I was hoping it would be. Le Tellier is upfront from the beginning, letting us know that he doesn't feel love for his parents. I was therefore expecting a heartfelt exploration into all the whys and wherefores of his troubled childhood. Instead, we simply got a recital of the family tree with some anecdotes about things that were said and done.

Don't get me wrong, Herve's family was pretty ghastly. His mother would now be diagnosed with a pretty major personality disorder and his step father with codependency. His biological father obviously spent the rest of his just being grateful that he got out. Herve had lots of very good reasons to distance himself from the family of his birth as soon as he could, but the problem was, he also kept us, the reader, at a distance.

Memoirs, these days, are expected to provide various psychological insights as well as catharsis for the author. One of the very best that I've read in recent times is, Nadja Spiegleman's I'm Supposed to Protect You From All This. Le Tellier's book has obviously been cathartic for him, but I didn't feel like I got to know him at all. His lack of curiosity about why his mother and other family members acted the way they did was, well, curious. This complete detachment was no doubt his survival technique, but I wanted him to draw this bow too and show us how he had embraced his life away from the parental home. How does one go on to develop empathy, caring kindness and healthy relationships when one has a childhood lacking in all of the above?

Le Tellier does state at the end that he doesn't 'know what it might mean to anyone other than me. But by putting into words to my story, I've understood that sometimes a child's only choice is to escape.'

I guess what I was hoping for was some insights into the lingering after effects of such an upbringing (there are always lingering after effects). The decisive breaks away from his childhood experience as well as the personal realisations that he must have made throughout his adult life would have been fascinating to read. Perhaps this is just the first step for Le Tellier in this process or maybe he's simply not as introspective as I am!

I also chose to read this book now thanks to Paris in July. Casual mentions of some antique furniture and a country house with references to French history and pop culture were interesting, but the place of origin was ultimately less significant than the family of origin.

Favourite or Forget: Knowing a less extreme version of Le Tellier's mother, made this book interesting, with my own personal insights coming from Le Tellier's example.

Facts:

• Translated in 2019 by Adriana Hunter a British translator of over 60 French novels.

Book 13 of 20 Books of Summer Winter
Sydney 24℃
Dublin 20℃

A New England Affair by Steven Carroll

In close to one of the worst book cover choices I've ever seen, A New England Affair by Steve Carroll is a classic case of a book that should not be judged by its cover!

Yes, a woman heading out to sea (to the Dry Salvages) is a central part of the story, but the woman (Emily Hale) is elderly and is meant to be carrying a satchel, stuffed with letters and journals (detailing her life long love affair with T. S. Eliot), slung over her shoulders. I'm sure that pink dress was fashionable once, but nothing about that cover says 'pick me up and look inside'. Fortunately Steven Carroll's name is in large print, and that is now enough to make me look twice.

I adored The Lost Life, Carroll's first story in his planned T. S. Eliot quartet and admired A World of Other People. Curiously I didn't feel anywhere near as passionate about AWOOP, as I did about TLL, although I remember far more about it.

The premise of the four stories is loosely linked to Eliot's Four Quartets, which had the potential to make the books too clever for their own good, but the link is loose and you could read all of the books in any order, as stand alone stories, without any knowledge of the poems. Which is how I started off.

Of course, I couldn't stay out of the loop for long!

I sourced a copy of Burnt Norton during my reading of The Lost Life, then hunted down Little Gidding for A World of Other People. Naturally I also printed off a copy of Dry Salvages as soon as I started A New England Affair. I now also have East Coker ready for the final book in the series.

My memory of The Lost Life is passion. The early, heady days of a young love, a new love, a moment in time, suspended by heightened emotions. Two young lovers wander the grounds of Burnt Norton and spy an older couple - lovers of a different age, a different time - acting secretly in the distance. The older couple are Tom Eliot and Emily Hale. I remember the intense emotions, the secrets and the garden. It was sumptuous and delicious.

It was hard for A World of Other People to live up to the high expectations I had set it. Carroll jumped in time to the start of WWII and once again we view Eliot through the eyes of another. A young poet, Iris, who shared the firewatch during the Blitz with Eliot. This book was heavier on the poetry as Iris observed how Eliot turned their nighttime duties into a poem. Intertwined is the story of an Australian pilot, the only survivor of a crash that Iris and Eliot observed from atop their building. It was a memorable, moving story, but didn't capture my emotional state as much as The Lost Life.

With the third novel, A New England Affair, I'm realising that we have only ever seen Eliot through the eyes of others. I wonder if the fourth book will finally be Eliot's story?

This time it was Emily Hale's story. Although we also get to see Emily via the eyes of one her 'girls'. Carroll enjoys playing with time and how we (Eliot and Hale) look and how our lives appear to younger generations.

I confess that by the end of this book, I came to the conclusion that Eliot was a bit of a dick. Selfish and self-important. I guess it takes a certain kind of bravado and bravura to live a complete creative life.

I felt for Emily's lonely plight, but ultimately wondered if she didn't buy into the whole T. S. Eliot thing to suit her own agenda. Her search for meaning and belonging was almost as desperate as Eliot's need to be loved and adored.

The various time frames and perspectives were a little confusing at the start, but I ended up enjoying seeing Emily through the eyes of young Grace and Ted. Their mid-60's sensibilities provided a midway point from which to judge the relationship. They saw themselves as being a modern couple, and Grace was able to live a more adventurous, independent life than Emily ever could have. But our 21st century gaze saw both couples as being dated, old-fashioned and of their time. Just like our kids and grandkids will one day view us. On and on it goes!

The 'girls' that Emily shared her love letters with, reminded me of Miss Jean Brodie and that need both women had to have someone observe their lives and give them purpose and a sense of specialness.

How accurate Carroll's depiction of this lop-sided love affair is/was, will not be fully resolved until 1st January 2020 when Hale's collection of over a thousand of Eliot’s letters to her will be opened by the current caretakers at Princeton. But for now, we can sit back and enjoy the wonder of Carroll's considerate, thoughtful imaginings.

Maisie Dobbs #13 In This Grave Hour

In This Grave Hour is the thirteenth Maisie Dobb's book, and as the title suggests, WWII has just been declared. As with any long running series, some books are better than others. In the early stages of this one, I thought we had one of the lesser Maisie's on our hands. It felt a little clunky, like it was trying too hard to find the Maisie magic of old.

But as we went along, the pace picked up and Winspear found her groove. The regular, much-loved cast of characters add the heart and soul to this story and they all got a chance to shine in this story, especially Maisie's dad, who I just adore.

The crime centred around the revenge-styled murders of Belgium refugees from WWI, but the emotional heart of the story involved the children evacuated from London during the early days of the wars announcement. Maisie also got to revisit an old flame in the guise of Richard Stratton, recalled to London to help with the war effort.

After feeling so fearful for Priscilla's young adults sons in the previous book, In This Grave Hour brings the sense of tension back a few notches. This reflected the anti-climax that occurred in England after the initial announcement when nothing actually happened, leading the early stages of WWII to be called the phoney war or the bore war.

In This Grave Hour was not Maisie's best work, but she's such a lovely, comfort read for me, that I will forgive many sins, just to disappear into her world for a while. Her happy mix of empathy and rational thought is a combination that I find endearing and admirable. Spending time with such kind hearted, well-meaning people will always feel like a good thing to do.

Maisie Dobbs #1
Maisie Dobbs #2 Birds of a Feather
Maisie Dobbs #3 Pardonable Lies
Maisie Dobbs #4 Messenger of Truth
Maisie Dobbs #5 An Incomplete Revenge
Maisie Dobbs #6 Among the Mad
Maisie Dobbs #7 The Mapping of Love and Death
Maisie Dobbs #8 A Lesson in Secrets
Maisie Dobbs #9 Elegy for Eddie
Maisie Dobbs #10 Leaving Everything Most Loved
Maisie Dobbs #11 A Dangerous Place
Maisie Dobbs #12 Journey to Munich
Maisie Dobbs #13 In This Grave Hour
Maisie Dobbs #14 To Die But Once

The Secrets She Keeps by Michael Robotham

I'm not usually a big reader of crime fiction.

During my younger days I enjoyed a good mystery wrapped up in an adventure series (thank you Trixie Belden and Enid Blyton) and I still love to delve into the psychological reasons why people do the things they do (Maigret fits the bill here). Cosy crime is my favourite though, especially if it's dressed up as historical fiction (Maisie Dobbs, Rowland Sinclair & Phryne Fisher) but straight up and down crime is not usually my thing.

However my book club chose Michael Robotham's The Secrets She Keeps as our latest read. I didn't read the last book club book, so I felt compelled to do better this month.

Mr Books is a big fan of Robotham, but I approached reluctantly. The story is told from the alternating perspectives of Agatha and Meghan, two women with very big secrets to keep, whose lives are on a serious collision course. The cover told me that baby snatching was going to be the crime at the centre of this story.

I thought I had it all worked out very early on. The first part was a 'who-dunnit' and I thought I was being inordinately clever by working out who and how so quickly. Except, suddenly, by the midpoint so did everyone else. Which is where the story became more of a 'why-dunnit', the tension ramped up several notches and I found myself reading until 1am to find out what happened next!

Although I didn't really like any of the characters, I felt a lot of sympathy for the crim. She was one damaged woman, who made a lot of very poor and very dangerous choices. Robotham portrayed someone suffering from a severe personality disorder very realistically, albeit with the necessary literary exaggeration to make for an interesting tale.

Apparently the story of a baby being kidnapped from a hospital was based on a true event from the 1990's (perhaps this one).

The Secrets She Keeps was a true page-turner, but for me, it's also like eating fairy floss. Fun while it lasts, but not very satisfying in the long run.

I don't mean to sound like a genre-snob; everyone reads for different reasons, and it's truly wonderful that there's a book genre to suit everyone's needs. Mr Books loves this kind of stuff, along with political thrillers, Scandi noir, courtroom dramas and Underbelly style true crime. He reads it to relax at 5am when he can't get back to sleep. He likes an engaging story, straight-forward, but clever writing, language that has been pared back to the bone and a well-constructed, well-paced plot with complex, believable characters. Robotham ticks all these boxes.

It's just that in this short time I have on this planet to read all the book I want to read, I don't want to spend too much time on books that aren't really my thing. I read to find beauty, elegance and kindred spirits. I read to get lost in another's world. I read for intellectual stimulation. I read to find answers to life's big questions. I read for comfort and emotional connection.

Which makes me wonder why other people read?

Do you read like Mr Books, for the pure pleasure of escapism, like me, for the pleasure of connection and beauty, or do you have your very own reasons to read? Why do you read what you read?

Taboo by Kim Scott

I'm not sure I will be able to adequately sum up my thoughts and impressions about Taboo by Kim Scott, but I'll give it a shot.

Scott has been shortlisted for this year's Miles Franklin Award; he has already won it twice. In 2000 for Benang: From the Heart and again in 2011 for That Deadman Dance.

Benang is on my TBR pile, but I have yet to read either. My understanding is that they are both historical fiction in nature, with an Indigenous perspective of our shared history. Taboo is contemporary fiction, with not only an Indigenous perspective of our shared history but also with an eye towards our possible shared future. I found it to be an extraordinary feat of compassion, revelation and hope. 

After stumbling through the first 50 pages or so, lost and unsure how to proceed, I found a kind of rhythm and sense to the disjointed passages. The jumps and starts started to feel symbolic and purposeful. I then began to see the poetry in the chaos. 

Scott described this style in the Afterword as, 

a trippy, stumbling sort of genre-hop that I think features a trace of Fairy Tale, a touch of Gothic, a sufficiency of the ubiquitous Social Realism and perhaps a tease of Creation Story.

The story at the heart of Taboo is the memory of an 18th century massacre and the work that a small country town in W.A. does to heal this wound. From this brutal past, with all its miscommunication, misinterpretation & denial as well as the stark realities of modern life for many Aboriginal Australians, Scott encourages us to find connection and shared meaning.

And country.

Like, Scott, I believe that the hope for our future lies in our shared sense of country. It is thanks to our Aboriginal heritage that many Anglo-Australians have changed the way they/we/me use the word 'country' to describe our sense of belonging and attachment to this place we call home. It's an important shift in thinking and feeling that gives all of us a common sense of belonging, well-being and pride. 

The power of words and the importance of language is another central idea explored by Scott in Taboo,

Story like this really about coming together, healing and making ourselves strong with language.

He reminds us that many place names as well as the names for native plants and animals have been derived from their Aboriginal names. Aboriginal history is all around us; in country and in words.

We'll take the language back, the stories that belong here and tell us who to be, what we can do.

Mangart - Jam tree - Acacia acuminata

'Words hold everything together.'

One of the trees endemic to the Noongar region of W.A., that Scott's characters regularly referred to, was a jam tree. The stone curlew was important too. I didn't know either by sight, so I did a quick search to help me with imagining the environment accurately. 

Bush stone curlew

As you might expect from a story about a massacre, spirits, ghosts, presences and apparitions haunt as well as welcome our characters - the Aboriginal characters as well as the Anglo ones - to place and time. They are,

'something both new and old, something recreated and invigorated.' 

Scott doesn't shy away from the complexities inherent in modern Australian life. His characters were not stereotypes or caricatures. They were flawed, idealistic, weak, contrary human beings trying to be the best they could.

Or as Scott says in his Afterword, 'a little band of survivors following a retreating tide of history, and returning with language and story...provides the connection with a story of place deeper than colonisation, and for transformation and healing.'

Bill @The Australian Legend has written an informative post about the Cocanarup massacres that are central to this story.

If you'd like to learn more about Noongar language and culture visit their website here.

Scott has also been engaged in the Stories Project that produces illustrated picture books in Noongar language.

The Garma Festival is currently on in Gove, Northern Territory. An awareness and appreciation for our Indigenous past is slowing, oh so slowly, gaining momentum, although our politicians response to the Uluru Statement from last year is sadly lagging behind the thinking of many other Australians.

Book 14 of #20BooksofSummer (winter)
24℃ in Sydney
21℃ in Northern Ireland

Things A Bright Girl Can Do by Sally Nicholls

Things a Bright Girl Can Do is a YA story that grabs its title from a much older book called Three Hundred and One Things a Girl Can Do. Published in 1911, it included things like how to decorate a church, make coloured fires, the rules of croquet, how to pitch a tent, do magic tricks and how to make a parachute.

However, Nicholls has not written another how-to book for girls. Her bright girls are coming of age in pre-WWI London with the suffragette movement in full swing and the threat of a war on the horizon. As you would expect from Sally Nicholls, Things a Bright Can Do is well-written and well researched.

One little thing kept bugging me though. Nicholls went to a lot of trouble to describe the time and place and she gave the reader a fabulous feel for what life was like for a Victorian girl, but she kept ascribing her main character, Evelyn adolescent behaviours and thoughts that resembled a modern teen. Given that the 'surly, self-absorbed teen' is a modern construct, dating from around WWII, it felt out of place and unauthentic.

It may have been a device to engage the modern teen reader, but I feel that lovers of good historical fiction can cope with the idea that society viewed the teen years very differently at different times. And that it might even be constructive to have that conversation with modern teens.

Once we got passed this little hiccup though, the book settled into an exciting, absorbing story.

Three young women are our protagonists. Evelyn from a wealthy family, is well-educated, but only so far. Her brother gets to go to Oxford but not Evelyn. She's expected to marry the boy next door and give tea parties. Instead she gets caught up in the suffragette's cause and finds herself going from handing our leaflets, to marching, to stonewalling parliament house and getting arrested. A life-threatening hunger-strike causes her to rethink her beliefs and the best way to express them.

May is from a Quaker family. She and her mother are heavily involved in helping the women's cause via non-violent protests - petitions, meetings, letter writing campaigns. After her mother is declared bankrupt for non-payment of taxes (a choice she made in protest about not being able to vote), May questions if this is the best way to change people's minds. May is also gay.

Nell is from the poor streets and comes from a large family, living hand to mouth, day by day. Nell has grown up wearing her older brothers hand-me-down clothes, but it has never worried her. She prefers wearing pants and playing cricket with the boys. She is attracted to girls. Nell gets impatient with suffragettes (and politicians) who talk a lot about social justice but do little to actually improve the lot of women and children living in the slums of London.

World War One changes everything for all three girls. In good ways and in bad.

The relationship between May and Nell is explored thoughtfully, whereas Evelyn's relationship with Teddy feels less well-developed. Perhaps because Teddy is not as well drawn as the three girls are by Nicholls, until right at the end, when he has been injured in the war.

Having Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth still very much in my mind, I was impressed to read a section that was obviously referencing Brittain's thoughts and experiences in the lead up to the Battle of the Somme. In her afterword, Nicholls acknowledged her gratitude to Brittain as the character of Evelyn obviously has a lot in common with Brittain.

Nicholls certainly writes an engrossing historical fiction and like all writers of history she has to make choices about how best to tell the story she wants to tell which involves what to leave out, what to gloss over and whether or not to go for accurate use of language. Nicholls choices are not jarring or even deal breakers, but they are evident to the adult reader.

All Fall Down was an earlier YA book by Nicholls about the Black Plague that I also enjoyed.

Book 13 of #20BooksofSummer (winter) drop-in title
21℃ in Sydney
16℃ in Northern Ireland
I read this book during the July #reversereadathon

A Rightful Place: A Road Map to Recognition edited by Shireen Morris

A Rightful Place: A Road Map to Recognition evolved out of last year's Uluru Statement from the Heart. It includes a foreward by Galarrwuy Yunupingu, a long essay by Noel Pearson which gives the book its title, as well as pieces by Megan Davis, Jackie Huggins & Rod Little, Damien Freeman & Nolan Hunter, Warren Mundine, Shireen Morris, and Stan Grant.

I learnt a lot and have much to mull over thanks to the ideas presented in this book. The written response below is MY journey to understand these important ideas.

I will be quoting and noting stuff that struck me, linking to the places it took me - a book journaling experience more than a critique or review. A resource post more than a response at this point.

Galarrwuy Yunupingu - Foreward

• 1978 Australian of the Year. His younger brother Mandawuy, his younger brother and founding member of Yothu Yindi, was named Australian of the Year in 1992. Helped his father, Mungurrawuy Yunupingu draft the Bark Petition of 1963.
• Discusses the background ideas behind the Uluru Statement - how it is seen in the 'spirit of makarrata' - a way for 'disputing parties' to come together, 'led by their elders', to speak 'carefully and calmly about the dispute', to 'seek a full understanding' about what has happened, where responsibility lies and how to achieve a peaceful settlement. 
• This settlement then leads to a 'symbolic reckoning' that shows that the 'dispute no longer exists; it is finished'. 
• He stresses 'unity and togetherness' 'peace and harmony' and our 'shared future'.
• 'The essays in this book also form part of the process - these words are a gift to us all'.

The Uluru Statement from the Heart

• 26th May 2017
• Called for the 'establishment of a First Nations Voice' in the Constitution as well as a Makarrata Commission 'to supervise a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations and truth-telling about our history.'
• 'In 1967 we were counted, in 2017 we seek to be heard.'

Uluru Statement - Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair 2017: Photo by Lea McInerney

Noel Pearson - A Rightful Place

• Refers to Yunupingu's essay in The Monthly December 2008, Tradition, Truth and Tomorrow. He calls it a powerful, personal 'existential prayer'.  I was intrigued & found an online copy (link above).
• I learnt a lot and urge you to read a copy when you get a chance. 
• There were beautiful things like:

My parents gave me the name Galarrwuy, which means ‘the area on the horizon where the sea merges with the sky'.

• A succinct, clearly defined statement about Indigenous culture:

The clans of east Arnhem Land join me in acknowledging no king, no queen, no church and no state. Our allegiance is to each other, to our land and to the ceremonies that define us. It is through the ceremonies that our lives are created. These ceremonies record and pass on the laws that give us ownership of the land and of the seas, and the rules by which we live. Our ceremonial grounds are our universities, where we gain the knowledge that we need.

• Local knowledge:

My inner life is that of the Yolngu song cycles, the ceremonies, the knowledge, the law and the land. This is yothu yindi. Balance. Wholeness. Completeness.

• A cry from the heart:

I have maintained the traditions, kept the law, performed my role - yet the Yolngu world is in crisis; we have stood still. I look around me and I feel the powerlessness of all our leaders. All around me are do-gooders and no-hopers - can I say this? Whitefellas. Balanda. They all seem to be one and the same sometimes: talking, talking, talking - smothering us - but with no vision to guide them; holding all the power, all the money, all the knowledge for what to do and how to work the white world. Only on the ceremonial ground do our leaders still lead - everywhere else we are simply paid lip service. Or bound up in red tape.

• Back to Noel Pearson:

Is there a proper and rightful place for the original peoples of Australia in the nation created from their ancestral lands?

• H.G. Wells' idea for The War of the Worlds came from a conversation with his brother about the invasion of Tasmania by European settlers. Considered them an 'inferior race'.
• Anthony Trollope in his 2 volume memoir, Australia and New Zealand wrote,

of the Australian black man we may say certainly that he has to go. That he should perish without unnecessary suffering should be the aim of all who are concerned in this matter.

• 2014 article about Trollope's time in Australia & the impression he made on Australians (not good!) & a link to Starck's book about this time called The First Celebrity.
• Charles Darwin in The Descent of Man:

when civilised nations come into contact with barbarians the struggle is short. 

•  Charles Dickens wrote in June 1853:

if we have anything to learn from the Noble Savage, it is what to avoid. His virtues are a fable; his happiness is a delusion; his nobility nonsense....the world will be all the better when his place knows him no more.

• Truganini - watch First Australians - Her Will to Survive (2008). 
• Review of Tom Lawson's The Last Man: A British Genocide in Tasmania is on pg 225 of link (plus reviews of loads of other books about Aboriginal Australia & Indigenous issues).

the destruction of the Tasmanians occurred in a British colony governed by the British Crown....frontier destruction and protection served the same colonial logic. A logic that envisioned no future for the native peoples.

• The History Wars (wikipedia entry) 

the progressives reinforced victimhood of the indigenes while their opponents denied their victimisation.

• Multiculturalism - 'the illusion of culture as a singular identity'.
• Identity fundamentalism vs layered identities
• Biculturalism:

We see our future as living in two worlds and moving between each: the Aboriginal world and the wider world.

• The democratic problem - the question of race, indigeneity, minority (3% of population).

more recently we have seen a proliferation of well-intentioned positive discrimination - benign in intent, but still harmful to our individual liberty and thus to our personal responsibility.

• integration and/or assimilation
• development, social & economic success and/or the Noble Savage preserving culture

In Australia, Indigenous peoples have not been allowed to make their own choices about how to reconcile their cultures with the demands of development.

• Race:

Today we understand there are no distinctions to be made among peoples on the basis of race. We are a human race. While we do not share a uniform culture, language, religion and ethnicity, we do share one characteristic: we are members of a single race. 

• 'our ancient heritage, our British inheritance and our multicultural triumph' pg 91 
• oikophilia - love of home - Roger Scruton - 'nations are defined not by kinship or religion but by a homeland'.

Megan Davis - Self-Determination & the Right to be Heard

• a Cobble Cobble woman from Queensland, a pro vice chancellor & professor of law at Uni NSW.
• discussion about international law & self-determination.
• Voice, Treaty & Truth.
• failure of politicians to 'pause and reflect' and do the 'slow work of listening' after the Uluru Statement from the Heart - it 'illustrated the institutional failure to hear'.
• another example of the 'history of Aboriginal Australia' being 'silenced'.

Jackie Huggins & Rod Little - A Rightful Place at the Table

• Fred Maynard NSW 1927 wrote to the premier to end the era of protection & control
• King Burraga 1933 called for representation in national parliament
• William Cooper 1937 petitioned King George V
• Pastor Sir Doug Nicholls 1949 wrote to PM Ben Chifley for reserved seats in parliament
• Yirrkala bark petitions 1963 called for better consultation
• Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines & Torres Strait Islanders (FCAATSI) 1957 pushed for constitutional change & national advocacy
• referendum 1967
• Larrakia people 1972 petitioned Queen Elizabeth II for treaties, land rights & political representation
• Aboriginal Tent Embassy
• National Aboriginal Consultative Committee (NACC) 1973 established by PM Gough Whitlam  as an advisory body
• NACC abolished 1977 when government changed & National Aboriginal Conference (NAC) created to enable broader representation
• NAC dismantled 1985 by PM Bob Hawke
• Barunga Statement 1988 presented to Hawke
• Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) 1989
• ATSIC abolished by PM John Howard 'should have been improved rather than abolished'.

There has been no treaty, though our people have repeatedly asked for one. Mutual goals have never been articualted. A shared vision for our country and the place of Indigenous peoples within it has never been agreed.

• National Apology to the Stolen Generation 2008 by PM Kevin Rudd
• Congress 2009
• Redfern Statement 2016 delivered by Congress

We don't seek to harm Australia: we seek to make a better country for all of us.

Damien Freeman & Nolan Hunter - When Two Rivers Become One 

• Discusses Treaty of Waitangi - 'a powerful symbol of how we might do things better'.
• SMH 2017 article about why NZ Maori's got a treaty & Australian Aboriginals didn't.
• 3 components to the treaty - 

Historical: agreed historical account, acknowledgements, and a Crown apology;

Cultural redress: site vesting, co-governance, protocols, dual place names, statutory recognition; and

Financial redress; cash and Crown assets.

• June 2015 Colin Barnett, premier of W.A. formally reached six agreements with the South West Aboriginal Land & Sea Council - the Noongar Native Title Agreement Groups.
• Noongar (Koorah, Nitja, Boordahwan) (Past, Present, Future) Recognition Act 2016.
• 'emotional resolution as much as a legal or political resolution.'
• 'unresolved anxiety is carried by non-Indigenous Australians, as well as by Indigenous.'

Warren Mundine - Recognising the First Nations

• Rachel Perkins - RECOGNISE Gala Dinner 2014 - link to her Quarterly Essay response to Noel Pearson's QE essay, A Rightful Place.

It's a two-way mirror, we acknowledge you, you acknowledge us, we become one.

• Bill Shorten's speech for the 2015 RECOGNISE Gala Dinner.
• conservative opposition is not about indifference or injustice, but more about concern about the 'consequences of the proposed changes'.
• Uphold and Recognise proposal - 'complement the operation of the Constitution, not direct it.'
• The Forgotten People: Liberal and Conservative Approaches to Recognising Indigenous Peoples edited by Damien Freeman and Shireen Morris with a chapter by Tim Wilson, proposing An Australian Declaration of Unity. 

With this pledge we recognise we are all Australians,
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples,
Whose heritage, culture and language we cherish
and enduring connection to land and waters we respect,
The first European settlers that followed
Whose institutions and traditions we preserve,
The generations of migrants from across the seas
Who come to contribute to our shared future,
Built on a liberal democracy that binds us as equals,
With mutual respect and responsibility for each other
For a free, fair, just and united Australia for all.
We pledge our loyalty to Australia.

• A FULLER DECLARATION of AUSTRALIA’S NATIONHOOD: Options for Discussion is available as a PDF to read online.
• shared nationhood - common national story

Shireen Morris - False Equality

• objections to the Uluru Statement fall under four main objections:

1. equality politics (Institute of Public Affairs) - any reforms would 'create division, disunity and inequality' but is based on the assumption that 'all Australians are equal' and that it is a constitutional fact. It is not, it is in the US constitution, but not ours. We have the Racial Discrimination Act 1975.
2. identity politics (IPA, Greg Sheridan, Andrew Bolt, Rowan Dean) - negative nationalism (racism) - positive nationalism (patriotism 'the shared love of citizens for their country.') 'Australia is a nation of three parts: its ancient pre-colonial heritage, its inherited British institutions and its multicultural achievement.'
3. personal responsibility (Greg Sheridan, Andrew Bolt) - or 'irresponsibility'. Disadvantage and disempowerment. Responsibility requires 2 things 'that people are willing to take charge of their problems, and that government structures allow and empower them to take charge.'
4. all heart and no head (Rowan Dean) - emotional not practical
5. secret, separatist sovereignty (Keith Windschuttle). There IS a public separatist movement, but they are a 'minority and they don't support constitutional recognition.'

Stan Grant - A Makarrata Declaration: A Declaration of Our Country

• the power of story

While story grapples with timelessness, with ambivalence and ambiguity, we live in a land of laws, and the law demands certainty. If the First Peoples are to have justice, it must truly be acknowledged at law....But I would argue that we seek something more, that we write a declaration of our nation...that speaks beyond race or history....A nation is not just a set of laws. Above all, it is a story: a never-ending story of us....It should speak to our sense of place: our home. It should be a work of poets. It should stand alone, apart from the Constitution....should speak to who we have been and allow for who we may become....should be a song to our country.

I read this book for Lisa @ANZLitLovers Indigenous Literature Week.

Book 12 of #20BooksofSummer (Winter)
I finished reading this book last Thursday when it was
20℃ in Sydney
19℃ in Northern Ireland

I Am, I Am, I Am by Maggie O'Farrell

What an extraordinary lucky (or unlucky) life Maggie O'Farrell has had. Seventeen brushes with death in one lifetime seems rather excessive, to one who can barely think of one close call!

But seventeen there really are.

Some of the brushes are a little more tenuous than others - more like a sliding door moment that many of us may have had - like if I had left the house ten minutes earlier I might have been in the exact same spot where the car accident happened that I am now driving safely by. That's about as close as I get to a brush with death.

My mum's was a much closer call and more like the stories that O'Farrell relates in her book, with a near-drowning experience as a young child. It gets a little weird if I think about what would have happened if my uncle hadn't been there to save my mum. Who would I be now?

All the way through I Am, I Am, I Am I was wondering why O'Farrell chose to write her vignettes out of chronological order. That is, until I got to her story about a much too close brush with a truck on a narrow lane. She was in a relationship but walking out in a forest discussing a different future with another man, who was also in another relationship. No names, no ages, no specifics to pin down when this happened, to protect the innocent I assume.

There were a couple of near drowning moments, child birth traumas and serious life-threatening illnesses. O'Farrell's sliding doors moments centred around a blood test after she found out her boyfriend had been sleeping around and scary moments in her childhood when her mum nearly closed the boot on her head and she stepped off the kerb into oncoming traffic. Death or serious injury averted thanks to timing, quick thinking on someone else's behalf and good old fashioned luck.

The truly frightening story was the lucky escape from a murderer whilst walking in a quiet touristy unnamed area somewhere in the wilds of England. It reminded me of the vignette in Ian McEwan's Amsterdam that was curiously based on a real experience that McEwan had whilst walking around the Lakes District in his younger years. It made me wonder if they had both run into the same creepy guy.

However, most of the stories were closer to mini-memoirs. In amongst the dangerous moment were revealing facts about O'Farrell's childhood, her early career choices, first boyfriends, her travel anecdotes, her studies, writing and thoughts on motherhood.

One of her final stories details her childhood brush with death via encephalitis. This seems to be the formative story about how and why O'Farrell faces the thought of death and approaches the rest of her life with such a 'sanguine' indifference:

Coming so close to death as a young child, only to resurface again into life, imbued in me for a long time a brand of recklessness, a cavalier or even crazed attitude to risk....I leapt off harbour walls. I walked alone in remote mountains. I took night trains through Europe on my own, arriving in capital cities in the middle of the night with nowhere to stay. I cycled blithely along what is dubbed 'South America's Most Dangerous Road', a vertiginous, crumbling, eroding track cut into a steep peak....I walked across frozen lakes. I swam in dangerous waters.

I've never read any of her fiction titles, but here, I enjoyed her way with words and the pictures she painted with them. They felt genuine and heart-felt. I read one or two stories at a time during my lunch break, which was the perfect way to read them I feel. I suspect if I tried to read this is one go I might have got a little tired of the theme and the fact that some of the brushes were a little more tenuous than others to say the least.

Very enjoyable short stories, one dose at a time.

Book 9 of #20booksofsummer (winter) drop-in title
Sydney 23℃
Northern Ireland 20℃

See What I Have Done by Sarah Schmidt

Lizzie Borden is a fascinating character.

Did she or did she not kill her father and stepmother with a hatchet one summer's day in Fall River, Massachusetts in 1892?

So much has been written and said about these rather gruesome murders over the years. So much speculation and innuendo. What more is there possibly to say?

Firstly, in 2012, the journals of Lizzie's attorney, Andrew Jackson Jennings were bequeathed to the Fall River Historical Society.

Since then, the Society have had the journals transcribed by curators Michael Martins and Dennis Binette.
Snippets of information have been leaked out during this time, but apparently we are awaiting the publication of a book from the Society for the full reveal!

In the meantime, we have another book fictionalising Lizzie's story, Sarah Schmidt's See What I Have Done.

It's hard not to believe that Lizzie committed the murders. She was in the house at the time. She had the opportunity and the motive. And well, let's face it, from everything we've read ever since, she was rather unstable and most likely had a narcissistic and/or borderline personality disorder going on (not that everyone with NBPD is capable of murder, but it's just another one of the factors stacked against Lizzie in this case).

Schmidt tells her story from multiple perspective - Lizzie, Emma (the sister), Bridget (the maid) and Benjamin (a 'friend' of Uncle John's). This is where her tale diverges from some of the others.

Benjamin is a very dubious low-life thug that Uncle John meets en route to Fall River. He engages Benjamin to rough up/talk to Andrew in an attempt to dissuade Andrew from certain financial actions that John wasn't happy about.

Schmidt then uses Benjamin to 'see' things that others in the house at the time couldn't as well as using his presence to explain why the police couldn't find a murder weapon. Later on, he acts as the catalyst for the life-long estrangement of the two sisters in 1905.

This was a satisfying explanation, although somewhat frustrating at the same time. Benjamin is a fictional character in a story with real life well-known people. He provided us with some plausible possibilities, but ultimately, he's not real, so therefore his solutions are not the ones we need to solve this case once and for all.

I guess we will never know for sure, unless Jennings' journals prove to be as earth-shattering as the curators have promised.

If you'd like to read more versions of Lizzie's story you could try Angela Carter's The Fall River Axe Murders and Lizzie's Tiger, Elizabeth Engstrom's Lizzie Borden and Brandy Purdy's The Secrets of Lizzie Borden.

The murders and trial of Lizzie have also attracted a number of movie adaptations over the years. Actresses who have portrayed Lizzie include Elizabeth Montgomery, Christina Ricci, Alison Fraser and Chloe Sevigny.

See What I Have Done is a debut novel by Australian writer, Sarah Schmidt. She has a blog that details her writing journey.

Hachette Australia will publish See What I Have Done in April 2017.