Austria in WWII: ‘The Secret Society of Salzburg’ by Renee Ryan
This historical fiction book opens with the arrest by the Gestapo of acclaimed and loved Austrian opera singer Elsa Mayer-Braun, on a stage in Salzburg in 1943. So, an early heads up of what one of the two main characters has to deal with.
From here the narrative weaves back and forth in time, and also across the English Channel, from the Continent to London, where we meet the other protagonist Hattie, who works in a dull civil service office, but longs to paint.
An unlikely pair of women to put together, but that is what the author does, as a chance meeting develops into a deep friendship between the two. Hattie travels to Austria with her sister to see Elsa perform and the sisters become stalwart fans of Elsa and her operas.
But of course war is coming and once their nations are at war, everything changes – except the women’s determination to carry out the secretive work of smuggling Jews out of Austria to England. Both Elsa and Hattie will not stop these life-saving rescue missions, despite the ever-increasing danger involved.
While Hattie’s artistic career takes off and Elsa travels Europe to perform – including singing for some high ranking Nazi officers – their secret missions ramp up.
As the tension mounts the reader is left guessing: is Elsa’s husband a threat or an ally? Who is the art dealer who supports Hattie’s artistic success and may just be falling in love with her? Will Elsa’s deep secrets be kept hidden or discovered by the Nazi heirarchy?
I loved that this story was inspired by real-life English sisters, civil servants who learned of the persecution of Jews through a freindship with an Austrian conductor and his wife. In my view, the best kind of historical fiction is that which touches on real people or events.
The Secret Society of Salzburg gives an insight into the experiences of Austrians in the lead-up and the early years of the war and Nazi occupation. It’s an engrossing story, well told.
The Secret Society of Salzburg was published in November 2023 by HarperCollins. My thanks to the publishers for a review copy.
Travels with My Ancestors #17: Josephine Eather and John Creek
This is the continuing story of the family and descendants of convicts Thomas Eather and Elizabeth Lee in Australia. You can find the very first post in this series here. That one deals with my journey to discover Elizabeth’s beginnings in Lancaster; following posts explore the Eather roots in Kent, then the journeys of both on convict ships to NSW, where they met and created a family and life together.
This chapter in the Eather family story is about my great-grandparents, Josephine Eather (1862 -1942) and John Lamrock Creek (1857 – 1924).
The Bush Nurse
West Maitland, NSW
In 1919, Josephine Creek (née Eather) received an official-looking envelope. It didn’t look like a bill—the kind of mail she was used to receiving. Inside were two thank you letters and a certificate, the second signed by the NSW Governor, the Premier and the Minister of Public Health.[1] When she’d read them, she carefully packed them away to keep.
Why had a fifty-seven year old mother of eleven, unaccustomed to public attention or recognition, received these messages from such prominent people?
~
When the Great War (1914-1918) ended, men and women who had served in the military or as nurses began the long trek home. With them came rumours of a deadly illness that was striking people down with frightening ferocity across Europe. Across Australia, some veterans returned with more than their injuries, kitbags and uniforms: they unwittingly also carried the virus that people began calling the Spanish Flu.
In the Maitland papers, Josephine (often known as ‘Jo’) no doubt read about the ratification of the longed-for peace treaty with Germany; but also the unwelcome news of rising influenza cases. There were long queues for the inoculation clinic at the Town Hall. Locals exchanged worried remarks about this invisible enemy. Wearied by four long years of war, worry, and loss, here was a new threat to contend with.
The government brought in travel restrictions, cancelled public events, closed schools and other institutions. Mask wearing in public became compulsory. [2] An Influenza Administrative Committee in the Hunter region managed and organised the local responses. They even ordered the railway station be fumigated. But four Maitland cases were diagnosed in March, the sufferers quarantined in their homes.
With more cases likely, an infectious ward was needed, and the Maitland Benevolent Home (known as Benhome) was repurposed, with existing residents of the home relocated to the Technical College building.[3]
Maitland Daily Mercury 28 Jan 1919 Via Trove What could she do to help? She was a woman of action, someone who’d not easily watch from the sidelines. When she heard the callout for people to care for those diagnosed with this troubling virus, she responded.
She joined a team of hospital and community nurses, those willing to work with the sick. She had worked as a bush nurse for several years, visiting homes, caring for people discharged from hospital, assisting with births and patient care in their homes. [4] She had the skills and experience to assist in this crisis.
With such a highly infectious disease, the work carried the risk of getting influenza herself. The hours were long and the work physically tiring: washing bedpans, scrubbing floors, cleaning medical equipment, feeding and bathing patients, changing bed linen, and many other tasks to keep a sick person clean and comfortable. She’d done it all before and could do it again now.
The death of young Maitland trainee nurse Molly Carr, struck down by flu in mid-June, brought other local women forward to help. At Maitland hospital, Matron Skullthorpe conducted education sessions on home nursing to more than fifty women who volunteered to assist when a shortage of nurses meant extra hands were needed.[5]
The Maitland Mercury gave daily reports of the donations that came in from the community for the influenza ward: eggs, butter, meals for the nursing staff, household goods, cloth to make masks and gowns.[6]
For several months it was all people could talk about. The energy that had kept everyone going during the war years was channelled into influenza relief. Of course, fear of the virus meant some people believed the silly ‘cures’ advertised in local papers, such as gargles or eucalyptus oil. Jo and her fellow nurses knew better.
By September the pandemic was contained. Maitland had weathered the worst of it; Benhome ceased its function as isolation ward and its long-term residents returned to the home. Jo and her community could breathe a collective sigh of relief.
‘Benhome’ around 1900. Source: University of Newcastle ~
The certificate she received, signed by the Governor, stated:
Nurse Creek volunteered and worked in the District supervised by the Newcastle Influenza Committee in connection with the stamping out of the pandemic of Pneumonic Influenza (1919) and for caring for sufferers, and thereby rendered eminent service in the cause of humanity [7].
The letters from the Committee applauded the work done by volunteers and nurses:
The Committee desires to sincerely thank you for your splendid work in assisting those unable to help themselves during the recent serious Epidemic. This work was carried out under conditions which were always trying and often dangerous…The whole community is indebted to you for your noble efforts which undoubtedly saved many lives… Without your spontaneous and continued help the work could not have been carried on…It will gratify you to know that your assistance brought comfort and relief to many cases of deep and genuine distress…[8]
One of the official thanks received by Josephine for her work during the 1919 Flu Epidemic
Copy in family collectionThis was quite a moment for a woman who had previously served both family and community with little recognition for her work. She had stepped up to help in the crisis and could be proud of what she and others had collectively achieved. She kept that certificate, and the two thank-you letters signed by Mayoress Edith Cracknell, until she died; after which they were carefully preserved by her family.
Before the Pandemic
Like many others in the large Eather clan, she had strong links to two major rivers and their valleys: the Hunter and the Hawkesbury. Born in 1862 when her parents Robert and Ann were living in Newcastle, she was the middle child of thirteen.[9]
Her older sisters might have sometimes spoken sadly of their tiny brother Robert, who had been born and died before her arrival. When she was ten, her sister Lucretia was buried, dead before her third birthday. Jo had helped care for her other little brother and sisters, just as her older siblings had done for her. She knew all about the risks and dangers for babies and young children, being born and getting through childhood.
When Lucretia died, Robert and Ann were living at Sally Bottoms (Tennyson) in the Hawkesbury Valley, with nearby Howes’ Creek meandering past paddocks and bushland. Here they farmed their thirty acres; the children working too, while never missing an opportunity to roam and explore the neighbouring creek and bush when their chores were done.
There were plenty of jobs to keep them busy: chopping wood, fetching water, looking after the littlies, peeling potatoes or kneading bread dough in the kitchen with their mother. There were animals to care for: cows to milk, chickens to feed and eggs to collect.
At least some of the children went to school for a few years, learning to read, write and do basic sums, likely at the provisional school established in the 1870s.[10]
In between they went rabbiting, fishing for yabbies in the creek, swimming to cool off on a hot day. They shared the creeks and paddocks with eels, snakes, tortoises, goannas and many kinds of birds.
They may have come across cave paintings or axe grinding grooves in sandstone ledges across waterways, mysterious signs of the Dharug people who lived on this country before white settlers had arrived to put up fences.
It was a busy, crowded childhood with few comforts; but they learnt everyday skills they carried into adulthood.
~
St Stephens at Kurrajong. Photo by author, 2023 When Jo was seventeen, she married John Creek in St Stephen’s Church, then ten years old, perched on its hill at Kurrajong.[11] Pausing a moment on the pathway to the little church, she’d have seen beautiful undulating fields laid out around her, cradled by blue-tinged mountains in the distance.
 Her new husband was a saddler, twenty-two years old, whose parents George Creek and Sarah Webb had emigrated twenty-five years earlier, as assisted immigrants from rural Cambridgeshire in England. They’d arrived in December 1854 on the ship General Hewitt, having packed their hopes for a better life into their trunks, stowed securely in the ship’s hold. [12]
Married life
John was George and Sarah’s only son. After their wedding Jo lived with her new husband on the north side of the river, where their first baby was born in 1880.[13]
John worked as a saddler at North Richmond. Saddlery was a skilled and respected trade, as almost everyone needed his wares: saddles and bridles for horses, harnesses for bullock teams, other leather items such as belts. In his day to day work John used an array of specialised tools, saddle frames, and hides, surrounded by the rich smell of leather and the oils used to soften and nourish it. It was honest, satisfying work.
Saddler and barber businesses at Australian Pioneer Village, Wilberforce NSW.
Photo by author, 2022The next three children were baptised at St Marys.[14] John had either found work at a saddlery business there, or opened his own.
A township with a strong industrial base, St Marys had tanneries, sawmills, brick makers, blacksmiths and wheelwrights, all making use of local resources. The railway arrived in the 1860’s and encouraged further development in industries such as sawmilling and tanning. The well-known Bennett’s wagon building business incorporated a number of these trades and their wagons were used by timber getters, farmers, and builders.[15] A saddlery business was guaranteed to do well there. The Creeks could look forward to their future with optimism.
But by the late 1880s they were back in the Hawkesbury at Kurrajong, where seven more babies were born over a fifteen-year period.[16]
~
Young Josephine Eather,
date unknown.
Photo in family collectionJust like her mother and grandmother before her, Jo’s adult life was dominated by childbirth and the care of children. All the practice she’d had as a young girl looking after her siblings came into its own.
Many of those babies were likely delivered by Sarah Howard, who lived at Little Wheeney Creek at Kurrajong. She was the district midwife, travelling on rough roads across the surrounding district, often late at night and in all weathers. Her arrival was always welcomed in homes where a labouring woman needed her expertise.[17]
Mrs Howard’s heroic commitment to local women and their families may have planted a seed in Jo’s imagination that was to bear fruit in her later life. How wonderful, to be a nurse bringing care to patients suffering in homes too far from a doctor or unable to travel! Perhaps she longed to be able to make this kind of difference in people’s lives.
~
In an awful echo of her mother’s experience, she found herself beside a tiny grave dug for her third baby, Robert, who died in 1884, after just one year of life.[18] He was buried in the cemetery of St Stephen’s at Kurrajong, the same church where four years earlier, she’d stood at the altar to marry John. At least her little boy would lie in a beautiful place, with the peaceful surrounds of the churchyard, and clear piping calls of bellbirds floating down from nearby trees.
St Stephens churchyard, 2023. Photo by author Eighteen years later, she returned to St Stephen’s for the funeral of another child, baby John (Jack) who died at three months, from convulsions brought on by whooping cough.[19] She’d had to endure the appalling sight of her baby struggling for each breath and the hooting sounds of his cough. Young life was so fragile. Despite her practiced hand with infants, there was nothing she could do to ease or prevent his death.
Who could have blamed her if, when registering the birth of her last baby Francis (Frank) a year later in 1903, she’d silently hoped that there’d be no more babies to fret and worry over.[20]
At least, back in the Hawkesbury again, she was nearby to comfort her mother when her father died in 1879.
In 1901, Australia made the momentous move to Federation—no longer a collection of separate states, now under one national constitution. Of course, women were not allowed to vote in Federal elections (and in most state elections, for that matter) until 1902. December 1903 was the first occasion on which Jo had the right to cast her vote. Finally, this was a franchise extended to most—but not all—women across the new nation. Indigenous women and men and people of ‘non-European’ backgrounds had to wait.
As she slipped her ballot paper into the box the first time, she’d have had a great deal to think about, including her children’s futures—especially her daughters. Perhaps their lives could be easier than her own.
Return to the Hunter
Around 1910, the family returned to Maitland. Australia had suffered an economic depression in the ‘jobless 90s’, and many were on the move, desperate to find work. If John’s saddlery business had slowed because of the downturn, he’d have struggled to make ends meet.
 An opportunity arose back in Maitland, to work at the prestigious Barden & Ribee Saddlery business in High Street.[21] Jo could leave behind sad memories now associated with the Hawkesbury.
Barden & Ribee Saddlers in Maitland. Photo from Athel D’Ombrain collection, courtesy of Univeristy of Newcastle They moved to Station Street Homeville, in West Maitland (now known as Brooks Street, Telarah.)
It was during these years that she began her nursing career.
~
In 1914 the cataclysm of the Great War erupted. Andrew Fisher, who was elected Prime Minister that year, voiced the opinion of many Australians that they should support Great Britain, when he declared that:
Australians [would] stand beside the mother country to help and defend her to our last man and our last shilling. [22]
Australians responded enthusiastically, with 416,809 enlisting for service, representing nearly 40% of the male population aged 18 to 44.[23]
None of the Creek boys signed up, though it was always a possibility. Would Jo have felt proud of her sons, if they had come home in uniform? Pride mixed with fear, perhaps—though to begin with, most people thought the war would be a short-lived affair. Cyril was a grocer, an important occupation during wartime—people always needed to buy food. Still, there was pressure to join up by some who believed all young men should ‘do their bit,’ even workers in key jobs.
The difficulties of wartime life included higher prices for essentials such as fuel and food. While there wasn’t formal rationing, trade embargoes and the government’s decision to send essential commodities to Britain resulted in shortages at home. Already a thrifty homemaker with a large family to feed, she had to further reduce the family’s consumption of items such as butter and meat. Newspapers and magazines were full of ‘austerity recipes’ with ideas on how to make food stretch further.
Many local women volunteered with the Red Cross, raising money, knitting socks, making cakes and jams, all of which were bundled up as ‘comfort packs’ to send to the boys at the front.
Through all this, she continued her nursing work.
John and Josephine Creek, date unknown. Photo in family collection Once the war had ended and the flu pandemic brought under control in 1919, life settled down to a calmer pace. But in January 1924, John died of kidney disease and a heart condition which had been troubling him for over a year.[24] He was buried at Campbell’s Hill Cemetery, West Maitland.[25]
More sadness was in store for Jo: her sister Elvina died two years later in 1926; and in 1929 daughter Priscilla, aged forty-four.[26] In that same year another sister, Cecilia, known as Mother Mary de-Sales of the Sisters of the Good Samaritan, passed away at the age of eighty.[27] And in 1933, she was given the news of the death of her forty-two year old daughter Alma, who had moved to Victoria after her marriage.[28]
Australia was now in the throes of the Great Depression. Maitland, once a thriving, prosperous town built on an abundance of natural resources, suffered like the rest of the country, with high unemployment and hardship.To make matters worse, in 1930 the Hunter River broke its banks in another flood, the worst since the previous century.[29] After the water receded, people spent long exhausting days sweeping mud from homes and shops, throwing out items onto huge rubbish piles, sorting through donations of clothing for flood victims. Just like the Hawkesbury of her youth, this river was both a giver of gifts and a deadly enemy.
West Maitland in 1930 flood.
Photo courtesy Newcastle & Hunter District Historical Society & University of Newcastle
Another War
By 1939, Australia was once again embroiled in a world war. During her final years, she had to relive the anxieties of wartime. This time the government did introduce rationing, with the war raging in the Pacific as well as in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
As war broke out, Jo’s youngest son Frank was living in England, where he worked as a porter at London’s Australia House. He joined the Civil Defence Service as an air raid warden and had special training in dealing with any gas attacks.[30] Jo must have worried about him, especially when news of German bombing raids on London filled the papers and radio broadcasts.
In 1942 came the devastating news that grandson Harvey (‘Snow’) Newton, her daughter Florence’s eldest, was missing in action after the fall of Singapore to the Japanese. How on earth could she comfort her daughter, faced with such loss? They continued to hope for better news, but the anguish at not knowing Snow’s fate never left.
There was a price to be paid for a long life. By the time she died at the end of December that year, aged eighty, Jo had outlived seven of her siblings, her husband, and four of her children. She was at least spared the eventual understanding that her grandson Snow would never return.[31] She did not live to see the end of the war and the safe return of other grandsons who’d enlisted.
John and Josephine’s headstones at Campbell’s Hill Cemetery, West Maitland. Photo by author, 2022 She was laid to rest near John at Campbell’s Hill cemetery.[32]
Witnesses to change
John and Josephine lived through tumultuous decades which ushered Australia into the modern era. Between them, they endured two major depressions, a world pandemic, two devastating world wars and numerous river floods. They witnessed the development of railways, motor vehicles, powered flight, telephone services, and saw Australia become a federated nation instead of a collection of British colonies.
Jo was among the first women in the British Empire with the right to cast her vote in federal and state elections.
They were ordinary people, living through extraordinary times. The legacy they left was not monetary wealth. Their names and photos did not appear in newspapers or history books. Still, their contributions to family and community were real and irreplaceable. Josephine’s certificate of thanks from the Governor and were testimony to that.
~
Josephine Creek, date unknown. Photo in family collection
[1] Copies in family collection[2] Janice Wilson, ‘Spanish Flu’, 2022, Maitland Stories at https://maitlandstories.com.au/stories/spanish-flu, accessed 7 June 2024[3] Janice Wilson, ‘Spanish Flu’[4] Josephine Creek 1913 in Australian Electoral Commission; Canberra, Australia; Electoral Rolls 1903-1980, Homeville, Maitland NSW. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 10 December 2022; Maitland Mercury 12 July 1919 Via Trove, accessed 11 Dec 2022; Janice Wilson,‘Spanish Flu’ https://maitlandstories.com.au/stories/spanish-flu, accessed 11 Dec 2022[5] Maitland Weekly Mercury (NSW 1894-1931), 5 April 1919 p7. Via Trove https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/128058576#, accessed Sept 17, 2023[6] Maitland Daily Mercury, (NSW 1894-1939), 12 July 1919 p5 Via Trove, accessed 28 Sept 2023[7] Department of Public Health Certificate for Influenza Workers (copy in family collection)[8] Alderman Edith B Cracknell and Influenza Relief Committee to Josephine Creek, Maitland, July 1919 (copy in family collection )[9] Birth of Josephine Eather, reg 1862/ 10963, Aust Birth Index 1788-1922, via Ancestry.com accessed 28 Sept 2023[10] Michelle Nichols, Pictorial History of Hawkesbury, Kingsclear Books, 2004, p35[11] Marriage of Josephine Eather and John Creek, 1879/4267, Australia Marriage Index 1788-1950. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 17 Sept 2023 June 2024 [12] State Records NSW, Persons on bounty ships to Sydney, Newcastle and Moreton bay (Board’s Immigrant Lists) Series 5317 Reel 2466, Item [4/4937] Via Ancestry.com, accessed 15 Dec 2022 [13] NSW Birth Certificate for John Creek, 1857/11943 Certified copy issued 12 Sept 1988 [14] Australian Birth Index John Lamrock Creek 1857/11943; Hannah Creek 1860/11726; Sarah Ann Creek 1866/14287 Via Ancestry.com, accessed 19 Sept 2023[15] Lorraine Stacker, Penrith & St Marys: A Pictorial History Kingsclear Books 2013, pp110-117 [16] NSW Birth Reg Cyril John Creek 1887/24289; Alma Creek 1891/30840; Isabella Creek 1893/31587; Florence May Creek 1896/16077; Ina Myrtle Creek 1899/15510; John Creek 1902/6579; Francis John Creek 1903/6619/
 Via Ancestry.com, accessed 20 Sept 2023[17] Nola O’Connor ‘Sarah Alexander (Howard) 1860-1948’ in The Millstone, Journal of Kurrajong-Comleroy Historical Society Inc, Vol 10 Issue 3, May-June 2012, p8 https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/114298699/augustus-john-creek: accessed 21 September 2023; Maintained by Frances France (contributor 47744340). [18] Robert George Creek in Australian Death Index 1787-1985, reg 1884/10080. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 20 Sept 2023 [19] John Cleave Creek in Australian Death Index 1787-1985, reg 1902/2879 [20] Frank Creek in Australian Birth Index 1788-1922, reg 1903/6619 Via Ancestry.com, accessed 20 June 2024 [21] The Maitland Daily Mercury (NSW: 1894 – 1939) 15 Dec 1915 p2 Via Trove, 20 accessed Sept 2023 [22] Department of Veterans Affairs, ANZAC Portal, at Australia’s responses to World War I – Anzac Portal (dva.gov.au) Accessed 20 June 2024 [23] Australian War Memorial Enlistment statistics, First World War | Australian War Memorial (awm.gov.au) [24] Death of John Creek 1924 in State Records Collection; Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia; Indexes to deceased estate files; Archive Series: NRS 13341; Series: “Pre A” Series (1923-1939); Reel Number: 3216 Via Ancestry.com, accessed 19 Sept 2023; Death certificate 1924/2319, transcription of 5 March 2024 [25] John Creek 1924 in Australia and New Zealand, Find A Grave Index, 1800s-Current: Via Ancestry.com, accessed 20 Sept 2023; Death Certificate 2319/1924 transcription of 12 March 2024 [26] Death of Elvina E Scott (nee Eather) 3 Jun. 1926 in Aust Cemetery Index 1808-2007, Compiler: Central Coast Family History Society; Collection Title: Index to the Charles Kinsela Funeral Directors Registers; Reference: Rookwood Church of England; Via Ancestry.com, accessed 29 Nov 2023; Death Priscilla Hayes (nee Creek) reg 1929/23773 Via Ancestry.com, accessed 20 Sept 2023 [27] Death of Cecilia Eather 1929/23773 in Aust Death Index, Via Ancestry.com, accessed 19 Sept 2023; Obituary Sr Mary de Sales, The Catholic Press, Sydney NSW 1895-1942, 28 Nov 1929. Via Trove, accessed 2 Sept 2023 [28] Death of Alma Millership (nee Creek) 1933/8918 in The Victorian Registry of Births, Deaths, and Marriages; Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, Via Ancestry.com, accessed 20 June 2024 [29] Maitland Stories: Timeline — Maitland: Our Place, Our Stories (maitlandstories.com.au), Accessed 20 June 2024 [30] 1939 England & Wales register, The National Archives; Kew, London, England; 1939 Register; Reference: Rg 101/530c Via Ancestry.com, accessed 20 Sept 2023 [31] Death Josephine Creek (nee Eather) Maitland NSW reg 1942/30857 Transcription of 31 Jan 2023 [32] Find A Grave Index, Josephine Creek 8 Dec 1942, Campbell’s Hill Cemetery Via Ancestry.com, accessed 5 Sept 2023The unforseen and sometimes hilarious consquences of lies: ‘The Too-Tall Tales of Alma T Best’ by Katherine Collette
What fun this novel is! Book One (‘Out of Bounds’) in what promises to be a captivating series for middle-grade readers, it offers plenty of genuine laugh-out-loud moments and also genuine insight into the insecurities of this age group as they transition from childhood to the teens.
Alma is twelve years old and six foot tall. She feels too-tall all the time. And she hates basketball and even more, hates being asked if she plays it.
When she begins Year 7 on a scholarship at the presitigous Holy Grace High School, she tells one little fib about where she lives. Rather than admitting she lives in Shellsville (a tiny town in the middle of nowhere and home to the district sewage treatment plant) she lets her new classmates believe that she lives on a farm – a peach farm.
A harmless little fib, right?
Except that this lie develops at shocking speed into a snowball, racing downhill at breakneck speed and threatening to demolish Alma’s whole life – and the network of subsequent lies she must tell to stop people discovering the truth about that first, harmless little fib.
She suddenly finds herself on the Holy Grace basketball team and committing to provide dozens of jars of peach jam for the school fundraiser.
The result are very amusing encounters with jam theft, basketball shoes, the bucket shot, mud masks and other assorted situations that she finds herself in. It’s a lovely tale of friends, family and fitting in.
Along the way Alma learns about lies:
The truth might be harder to tell initially but once you were through the difficult bit – and maybe parts were more difficult in your head than in actuality – it was easy, there was nothing to keep track of. Lies were the opposite: easy in the beginning and then hard. You saved face but drowned in complication. On balance, the truth seemed preferential.
The Too-Tall Tales of Alma T Best – Out of Bounds p261
Out of Bounds is published by HarperCollins Children’s Books in September 2024.
My thanks to the publishers for a review copy.Re-peopling history: ‘Dirrayawadha – Rise Up’ by Anita Heiss
I read this book with a sorrowful heart, knowing that the resolution could not be a positive one, even with the strong threads of family, love and strength that are twined throughout.
Historical fiction, it is based on the early conflicts between the Wiradjuri people of the central west of NSW with colonial settlers. These became known as the ‘Bathurst wars’ but were part of a wider, escalating series of violent encounters and retributions that today are more accurately referred to as the ‘Australian wars.’ Yes, folks, Australia has indeed had armed warfare on its soil.
The novel tells the story of Windradyne, a Wiradyuri leader, who refuses to submit to the ‘white ghosts’ who are attempting to take over his country and force his people into subjection. Windradyne is a real figure from history, a freedom fighter, though of course at the time the colonial authorities and many settlers regarded him more as a terrorist.
Along with Windradyne we meet his sister, Miinaa, who is living with some of her family at the property of the Nugents, Irish settlers who arrived free to the colony and have taken up land to farm. Of course the Nugents are part of the colonial mission and therefore part of the problem. However, they are kind people and have some sympathy for the Wiradjuri, and treat their employees, assigned convicts, and Wiradjuri, fairly.
Miinaa misses her extended family and their way of life, as she watches her world rapidly changing, almost beyond recognition. And as the violence surrounding her increases, she worries for her brother and the rest of her family.
Into the picture steps Dan, an Irish political prisoner transported to NSW as a convict. Dan can see the similarities between the British subjugation of the Irish, and the situation faced by the Wiradjuri. As Dan and Miinaa fall in love, he starts to understand more of the Wiradjuri world view, their cultural and spiritual practices and how Country is at the centre of it all. He is not alone but definitely in the minority among his fellow convicts and most white people, in his empathy with the Wiradjuri.
The outcome of this novel is not a happy one. How could it be, knowing how real history played out – and how First Nations people across Australia continue to suffer from generations of inherited trauma and dispossession?
There are some moments of hope and happiness, though. The strong bonds that unite and support Wiradjuri as they face an existential threat. The ability of some characters to reach across the racial divide and find things that connect them with each other.
As I often do, I checked out the historical facts that this story is inspired by, and was heartened to learn that the Nugents were based on a real family who did indeed employ (and shelter) Wiradjuri people, and maintained strong friendships with them across several generations. And Windradyne did not meet his death at the hands of the ‘white ghosts.’
The one aspect of the novel that jarred a little for me was the language used by characters, Wiradjuri and white, especially that of Dan. In his attempts to get his fellow-convicts and local settlers to understand the shared injustices faced by Wiradjuri and Irish, his dialogue includes many terms and expressions that I doubt would have been used by a young man at that time, such as ‘civil liberties’ and ‘plight of the dispossessed.’ Perhaps a well-educated Irish political activist may have done so, but I’m not sure about a man such as Dan.
However, the author uses these for a reason – to put the concepts into a modern-day perspective. In doing so, she blurs the boundaries of historical context a little, but makes the ideas and themes in the novel more accessible to many readers.
One of the many things I enjoyed about the book is the liberal use of Wiradjuri words and phrases throughout. This is a noticeable trend in books by First Nations authors and I love it! There is an extensive glossary provided but after reading through it, I found that simply immersing myself in the story and encountering repeated uses of words allowed me to absorb the meanings without feeling like I was taking part in a language lesson.
Use of Wiradjuri language also allows readers to glimpse some of the important concepts for Wiradjuri people, both in the past and today. It is no coincidence, for example, that the words I ‘learnt’ from reading this book included ones for children, Country, respect, family.
Dirrayawadha – Rise Up is gripping, troubling, and insightful and I recommend it to all who want to understand more about Australia’s colonial past. One of blurb comments about Heiss’ historical fiction is that she is ‘re-peopling history’ and I think that is accurate. Books like this bring to life real events in our nation’s past that most would have only a vague idea of, at best. I guarantee you will never visit Bathurst (one of my favourite country towns) in quite the same way after reading it.
Dirrayawadha – Rise Up was published by Simon & Schuster in July 2024.
My thanks to the publishers and to NetGalley for a copy to review.
Familiar place, familiar crime: ‘Pheasant’s Nest’ by Louise Milligan
Louise Milligan will be known to many Australians as an award winning investigative journalist and author of non-fiction books; Pheasant’s Nest is her debut novel. It opens on a stretch of road very familiar to me, and I’m sure to others who have driven the Hume Highway from Sydney to Canberra, or further south to Melbourne.
In this opening scene, the protagonist Kate Delaney is tied up on the back seat of a man’s car heading north from Melbourne. The man has committed a violent sexual assault and kidnapping and is now on the run with his victim.
The rest of the novel plays out as the clock ticks down: will it end with Kate’s murder or with rescue?
The narrative zips between Kate’s thoughts as she lies helpless and afraid in the car, to the panic and fear of her devoted boyfriend Liam and her best friend Sylvia, and to the two detectives in charge of the investigation.
I appreciated this aspect of the novel very much. Hearing what is in Kate’s head allows readers to see her as a person with a career (journalism, unsuprisingly), friends, family and a full, largely happy life. Of course she is terrified, too, because having covered plenty of crime cases as a journalist, she knows there is limited time for police to track down her assailant. Her fear feels very real.
What we also hear are her less serious thoughts: her reflections on her past, her career and colleagues, her lover and her friends. Some of these are actually very funny – unexpectedly in a crime novel like this. I particularly enjoyed the quite pointed but hilarious descriptions of the evangelical church ‘JoyChurch’ located in Sydney’s northwest ‘aspirational affluence belt,’ and the completely fake and probably corrupt couple at its centre.
The PTSD suffered by the NSW detective who has seen too many crimes and too many acts of self destruction also ring very true. He has held onto his compassion despite it all, but at great personal cost. His character speaks to the hard job we give police officers and their need for greater resourcing and personal support.
The other characters are also quite special; Liam and Sylvia as they head north to NSW to be closer to Kate (even though no one is sure exactly where she is) are beautifully drawn, as are some of the minor characters.
It’s a well paced and unfortunately very believable novel. We see too many headlines about women being attacked either by an intimate partner, a casual date, or a random person, to think that the crime at the centre of this story is not all-too-familiar in real life.
The author describes the stretch of road through the Southern Highlands of NSW in all its creepy detail. Anyone who followed the Ivan Milat serial killing cases in the Belanglo Forest there, or is aware of how many suicides have occured at the eponymous Pheasant’s Nest Bridge, will recognise the sensation of vague threat that driving through here can evoke.
Pheasant’s Nest is crime fiction with something important to say. It will be enjoyed by readers who don’t like too much gruesome detail but who appreciate familiar and believable characters and places in their fiction. It is published by Allen & Unwin in 2024.
The wonderful world of children’s literature
Four new books for children have arrived on my doorstep over the last little while – the best kind of mail! I absolutely love children’s literature and some of my fondest memories of my own childhood and that of my son are reading them, having them read to me, and reading them to another.
First off there is an illustrated chapter book by the wonderful Alice Pung, Millie Mak the Mender, a follow up to the earlier Millie Mak the Maker (which I have not read.)
Millie is eleven, and lives with her parents, her toddler sister, and one of her two grandmothers (the Chinese-Australian one) while also spending a lot of time after school at her other grandmother (the Scottish-Australian one.) Immediately we know we are in a world of inclusivity, one that embraces the richness of Australia’s multicultural life.
Millie has a talent, her ‘superpower’, which is her skill in designing, sewing, making and mending things. In the first part of the book she sees first-hand the loneliness of many residents at the aged care home where her mum works. She decides to design and make a warm winter hat for each, hats that are beautifully aligned to each resident’s own individual passions and interests.
A rather bossy and shallow girl at Millie’s school gets wind of the project, steals Millie’s idea and tries to scoop the glory by starting a ‘Hats off for Humanity’ project at the school – one which involves her in a ‘coordination’ role but not actually doing much else. Undeterred, Millie presses ahead with other projects to help her friends and their families.
The upshot of all this is that Millie and her three best friends are invited to be interviewed on a popular TV program for children. It’s all very exciting, but turns out to be a great disappointment because the show’s producers want to showcase stereotypical ‘ethnic children’ in what they think are traditional outfits. They don’t listen to the girls and Millie and her friends are left feeling they have been used.
It’s a hard lesson to learn and along the way they deal with lots of other life issues: ageism, racism, the difference between popularity and worth, the importance of family and of being a genuine friend.
The story is beautifully told, with natural language and everyday scenes, and the black and white illustrations by Sher Rill Ng bring Millie’s world to life.
A gorgeous addition to the early chapter book shelf, Millie Mak the Mender is published in September 2024.
The next three books are picture books.
What Do You Call Your Dad? by Ashleigh Barton and Martina Heiduczek is the next in the What Do You Call…? series (I have reviewed the ealrier titles on this blog.) Continuing on the theme of diversity and the joy of family and language in all their forms, in this one we hear the words for ‘dad’ spoken by children in Hungary, Ireland, Samoa, Nigeria, Portugal and Brazil, to name just a few. Once again the full colour illustrations allow children to be immersed in scenes from other cultures and homes.
What Do You Call Your Dad? was published in July 2024.
Before We Met by Gabrielle Tozer, illustrated by Sophie Beer, also celebrates families. It’s all about the anticipation and excitement that families feel while waiting to welcome a new child. We see all sorts of families as they plan and prepare for their new little person: adoptive parents, same-sex parents, IVF parents, parents far away. All filled with hope and plenty of love to share.
Before We Met is published in September 2024.
And last but not least, a Christmas offering: On the Hunt for Santa by Lesley Gibbes and Stephen Michael King. Three friends – Hare with a honey pot, Cat with a candy cane, and Pig with a plum pudding – set off on a mysterious trip.
Where were they going that snowy day, out in the cold so far away?They encounter all sorts of dangers and have adventures, never giving up, even when they hear the howls of hungry snow wolves on the prowl. Their destination is – of course! – the North Pole where they are greeted by a happy Santa, who clapped his mitts. It was Christmas Day. He was thrilled to bits.
On the Hunt for Santa is a gentle, jolly read-aloud book perfect for Christmas time snuggles, published in September 2024.
The four books are all published by HarperCollins.
My thanks to the publishers for review copies.Historical richness: ‘Threadbare’ by Jane Loeb Rubin
I reviewed US author Jane Loeb Rubin’s debut novel In the Hands of Women last year. Her second novel has been released recently and is actually a prequel to the first, as it tells the story of the experiences of refugees and immigrants in New York in the late 1800’s.
Once again there is a treasure trove of historical riches in this book. The main character is Tillie, a girl whose aspirations to attend high school are cut short by the tragic death of her mother from breast cancer. Tillie is left in charge of helping her father run their farm in Harlem, on what was then the northern outskirts of the city. She also keeps house and looks after her younger siblings, including Hannah, who is the main character featured in In the Hands of Women. In this new novel we get a fuller understanding of the tough circumstances in which Hannah’s life began, and the sacrifices made by her older sister.
Tillie marries at sixteen and fortunately – for it’s a match arranged in part by the local Rabbi – it is a mostly happy one. However her new husband brings her to live in the tenements of New York’s lower east side, notorious for their terrible squalor and poverty. The plan is to stay here only temporarily until they can save enough to move to a better area.
Tillie’s refuge is the local Jewish centre with its lending library, where she begins teaching English to the many people from Europe crowding into the city.
She helps her husband with his business selling buttons to the burgeoning clothing trade in the city, and becomes fascinated by fashions and the beautiful clothing she sees, but can never afford. During this time the family experience the trauma of the infectious diseases that run rampant through the poorly ventilated apartment buildings, and the death of an infant.
As an aside, I looked on Google maps to get an idea of the areas being described in the book. I was pleased to note that in the district where Tillie and Abe first live, there is now a museum dedicated to telling the stories of the many immigrant communities who lived here from the nineteenth century. The link to the Tenement Museum is here, if you are interested. If I ever get to New York City, it will be on my ‘to do’ list for sure.
As Abe’s business grows they move to a newer apartment and things begin to look up for the family. With her best friend Sadie, Tillie starts a business, making kits for poorer women to be able to sew their own clothes, using patterns rather like the ones my own mother used to buy, to sew for herself and her family.
I always love learning the ‘back story’ of a place, a company or industry, and Threadbare provides so much of the history of ‘Gilded Age’ New York – which was anything but gilded for its poorer citizens, especially women. Contraceptive devices and abortions were illegal then and made life so much harder for poor women and their families – something that Tillie herself experiences. There is also the scourge of diseases such as tuberculosis and women’s cancers, at a time when germ theory was a relatively new idea and surgical and other medical treatments still far from those we would recognise today.
Especially vivid in Threadbare is the way in which women in business were ignored, patronised, or ridiculed. Tillie’s husband must accompany her to meetings with potential business partners even though the ideas being pitched were hers and Sadie’s.
As in the best historical fiction, Threadbare offers opportunities to learn about the past while enjoying an engrossing story about believable and sympathetic characters. The ups and downs of Tillie’s life had me cheering her on, metaphorically speaking, and hoping that the many obstacles lined up against her could disappear. They don’t, of course, but in the process of her dealing with them we see what determination and courage look like.
As always with such stories, I drew particular pleasure from the fact that Tillie is inspired by the author’s real-life great-grandmother, Mathilde, who had arrived with her family from Germany in the 1860s. I can’t think of a better way to honour an ancestor than by writing a book inspired by their life!
Threadbare is published in 2024 by Level Best Books.
Small moments: ‘Tom Lake’ by Ann Patchett
American author Ann Patchett’s 2023 novel Tom Lake is a love letter to happy families, to the heady days of youth, and to the small moments that make up a life.
I’ve seen it described as Patchett’s ‘pandemic novel’ and I guess there is truth in that, insofar as the family at the centre of the narrative are brought together in summer on their cherry farm, and because of the pandemic restrictions, they must stay there.
While this might sound like the kind of scenario that sets us up to expect conflict, it does the opposite. This is a happy family, though not without some tensions. They work together to harvest the orchard’s cherry crop and while they work, and in breaks and at meal times, the protagonist Lara is telling her three young adult daughters the story of the summer in which she played a lead role in an iconic American play and fell madly in love with a young actor, who – unlike her – would go on to be very famous.
The narrative moves between the telling of Lara’s story and back in time to 1988 when the events of that summer played out.
Lara’s daughters think they already know the story of how their parents met and fell in love, but Lara’s story holds plenty of surprises for them and they hang on every word.
There is so much to love about this novel. It’s not about the big events that make history or headlines, but the summer of 1988 was momentous in many ways for the people concerned. Lara makes mistakes of youth and moves on from them. Others don’t. Her daughters are wide eyed and engrossed by the glimpses of another Lara – not ‘Mom’, as they know her, but as a young woman finding her way in the world, a full person in her own right, who owns her past and her errors and shares (most of) these openly with her family.
The characters are believable and engaging; Emily, Maisie and Nell (the daughters) are gorgeous vibrant young women with their own views about all sorts of things; Joe (the husband) is kindly and recognisably a good man. Duke (the famous actor) is flawed but charismatic; it’s easy to see why the young Lara was swept up in his orbit.
One of the loveliest components is the motif of the play at the centre of Lara’s youthful summer: Our Town by Thornton Wilder. I had heard of it but knew nothing about it really, and as it’s such a big part of the novel I went looking online and found a production on YouTube starring Paul Newman as the ‘Stage Manager’ (a sort of narrator.) What a treat!
The play is set in a small New Hampshire town at the turn of the twentieth century. It’s folksy charm is beguiling as we meet some of the town’s citizens as they go about their everyday lives. Humdrum, in a way. That’s Act One. In Act Two, two young neighbours, Emily and George, fall in love and decide to marry. Emily is the character played so memorably by Lara in that 1988 production of the play. So far, so good. The dialogue and action is full of those small moments that make up our lives. Nothing too dramatic or earth-shattering. There’s a lovely wedding scene, albeit with some asides to the audience that suggest that there is more going on in people’s hearts and minds than we might guess.
It’s in Act Three that the full meaning of the play becomes apparent. Actually it kind of whacks you on the head. In a good way. I began to see why it’s such an iconic play but also, why it meant so much to Emily and her fellow cast members in that summer of long ago; and why it means so much to her in adulthood with her loving family around her.
It is the small moments that make up a life, and it is often those that we miss in the living of it.
I was so glad to be able to watch a version of the play online as there are many references to it in the novel. You can most certainly read Tom Lake without knowledge of the play but understanding what Our Town is all about is truly an added bonus. I will quote here the Author’s Note at the end of Tom Lake because she says it so beautifully:
I thank Thornton Wilder, who wrote the play that has been an enduring comfort, guide, and inspiration throughout my life. If this novel has a goal, it is to turn the reader back to Our Town, and to all of Wilder’s work. Therein lies the joy.
Tom Lake Author’s NoteTom Lake was published by Bloomsbury Publishing in 2023.
The ‘other’ indigenous Australians: ‘Growing up Torres Strait Islander in Australia’ Edited by Samantha Faulkner
The ‘Growing Up’ series is a fabulous suite of books published by Black Inc Books, each of which ‘captures the diversity of our nation in moving and revelatory ways.‘ (Black Inc Books)
NB: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are advised that the book contains names and images of, as well as writing by, people who have died.
Previous titles in the series include: Growing Up Asian, Growing Up Aboriginal, Growing Up In Country Australia, Growing Up Queer…all designed to allow for the sharing of lived experiences by people who make up today’s Australia.
This latest edition is a collection of short pieces by Australians with Torres Strait Islander heritage – sometimes referred to as ‘the other Indigenous Australians.’
The Torres Strait Islands are located between the tip of Cape York Peninsula in far north Queensland, and the coast of Papua New Guinea. Torres Strait Islanders have a unique culture and a fascinating history. They are traditionally a sea-faring (or salt water) people, though of course in the past hundred years or so many have moved south to live on mainland Australia.
The pieces in this volume, educed by poet and author Samantha Faulkner, include stories about well-known people (such as Eddie Koiki Mabo, whose High Court challenge overturned the lie of ‘terra nullius’) or actor Aaron Fa’Aoso. It also includes names I was unfamiliar with. Young and older people. Those living in Torres Strait Island communities and those who have never been there, having lived all their lives on the mainland.
The stories say a lot about how culture and language are maintained, how precious childhood memories can fuel pride in culture, the many barriers that faced Islanders in the past and those encountered today, and how cross-cultural influences have contributed to the rich tapestry of Australian life: many contributors have ancestry that also includes mainland Australian First Nations, Malay, Japanese, Filipino, among others.
Together they paint a picture of the extraordinary depth and range of spiritual beliefs, languages, dance and other cultural practices that make up the vibrancy of the Torres Strait Island people.
If, like many Australians, you had never heard of or knew much about this corner of Australia, or its people, grab a copy of this book and learn! It’s a great read and very accessible. I’d love to see a copy in every public and school library across Australia.
Growing Up Torres Strait Islander in Australia is published by Black Inc Books in 2024.
Profound: ‘I Seek a Kind Person’ by Julian Borger
Imagine for a moment you are the parent of a youngster after the takeover of Austria by Nazi Germany in the 1930s. As conditions for Jewish families continue to worsen, you make the – incredible – decision to advertise in a British newspaper, hoping that someone – some kind person – will take in your son or daughter and look after them until their homeland is once again safe to live in.
That’s the story of author and Guardian World Affairs Editor Julian Borger’s father, Robert, who was advertised like this in the Manchester Guardian in August 1938. It was after the horror of Kristallnacht, (‘the night of broken glass’) when Jewish homes and businesses were smashed, looted and their occupants attacked. Young Robert himself was chased through the streets by a gang of Nazi bullies. His father came to the conclusion that Robert was not safe in Austria and for his own protection, needed to be sent abroad.
The book opens with Robert’s suicide in 1983. No spoiler there; the reader knows immediately that there is no ‘happy ever after’ in this story. What Julian did, decades later, was to discover the history of the advertisement of his father and many other Viennese children, and attempt to trace the experiences of seven of them.
The result is a grim, profound, at times almost unbearably moving story of the children, set against Jewish experiences in Vienna, especially in the time leading up to, during and after the Anschluss. Their experiences were varied, seemingly almost on the toss of a coin or a turn of fate (not all foster families were kind, as it turned out.) Surprisingly, some of the refugee children and some of their families ended up in far flung places: the Netherlands, Shanghai, in France working undercover in the Resistance, Wales.
For historians, especially family historians, it’s absorbing to read about the author’s investigations, brick walls and cold trails, sometimes followed by unexpected gems of information that allowed him to continue his research.
The book is also an interrogation of trauma.
The unhappiness and anxiety of youngster sent far from home to an uncertain future.
The trauma of those sent to the concentration camps, which the author describes as having to ‘learn to survive in a vast industrial enterprise dedicated to murder.’ (p177)
The ‘survivor guilt’ and silence of those who, usually by chance, avoided the camps: ‘We did not suffer from the cold and hunger and therefore our suffering does not come close to the suffering of the children of the ghettos and camps. That’s why we did not often tell our story.’ (p237)
And of course, the trauma handed down to the next generation: ‘We may want to let go of history, but that doesn’t necessarily mean history is finished with us…So maybe man hands on misery to man after all, though the reality is not entirely bleak, or we would all be wrecks.’ (p30)I Seek a Kind Person is a fascinating glimpse of the WWII experiences of a relatively small but representative group of Jewish people from one part of Europe that is both compelling and distressing. Beautifully and sensitively written, I highly recommend this book to any readers interested in knowing more about the real experiences of people in this war.
I Seek a Kind Person was published in 2024 by John Murray Publishers, an imprint of Hachette.
