A different lens: ‘The Shortest History of Australia’ by Mark McKenna
This latest volume of Black Inc’s Shortest History books offers an invigorating challenge to traditional southeast-focused and chronological narratives of Australian history.
In this book the national story is told via themes, such as ‘the founding lie’, ‘the Island dilemma’, ‘taking the land’, ‘fire and water’, or ‘the big picture.’ As the author remarks in chapter one: …history is not inherently linear; only historians make it that way. (p7)
The ‘usual’ big events and national turning points are all here: Captain Cook and the Endeavour; the penal colony, land and gold rushes, wars, legends like Ned Kelly and the ANZACS, migration, Federation, the legal sorcery of ‘terra nullius’ and the Mabo and Wik cases that overturned this doctrine, and so on.
However they are viewed through a series of different lenses: First Nations people and their stories and experiences; non-British migrants; the folk who occupied or visited the continent’s north over untold years; those who suffered under the endemic racism embedded in the British colonisation; asylum seekers in recent decades; droughts, floods and fires.
The story of pearl diving in the north is told alongside the stories of gold, wheat and wool in the southern states.
The centrality of Country to First Nations peoples’ worldview and the growing recognition of this among non-indigenous Australians is discussed, along with examples of the newly created Commonwealth’s wilful blindness to the humanity of Indigenous Australians at Federation (p230) and the heroic and persistent campaigners for Aboriginal rights over many, many years.
Mark McKenna has an informative and engaging narrative style; his book reads like a series of fascinating stories rather than a history text. Highly recommended for those who enjoy non-fiction that asks its readers to question and revisit what we think we know about our own national history.
The Shortest History of Australia was published by Black Inc in 2025.
Chilling ‘What if?’: ‘Inheritance’ by Genevieve Gannon
If you could reduce or eliminate the chance that your unborn child might suffer or die from a genetic illness or rampant variants of a virus that has already swept through the world, would you do it? What if you could ensure that your future son or daughter was born with gifts such as enhanced lung capacity, stronger bones, or a beautiful singing voice?
These are questions at the heart of Australian author Genevieve Gannon’s novel Inheritance. It’s strapline: The perfect child is now possible, makes pretty clear the kind of future world its characters inhabit.
Though, it’s not that far into the future. The novel opens in 2027, which at the time of its publication was just three short years away.
Emily and her husband Dougal are deciding whether to use a new gene editing service alongside more traditional IVF to help conceive a child. Now legal, the service offers to help the couple avoid some of the health-related pitfalls in their own families. But how far should they go in designing a baby?
There is a second, interwoven narrative set decades later, in a world where gene modification is no longer regarded as benign or desirable.
Adelaide is a political staffer in the office of a Parliamentarian whom she admires and respects, someone who is against the discriminatory rules that have been introduced in recent years, that put ‘modified’ people into a second-class of citizens.
But Adelaide has a secret that she is determined not to expose, one that involves a plan she and her husband have put into action, but that results in the clock ticking…will the result be disaster or joy for the couple?
Inheritance reads a bit like a thriller, with a tight timeline, conflicting political and social divisions, and adventures that require all the courage that Emily and Adelaide can muster.
As I read this story, though, I was mindful of how applicable its themes are today: particularly technology that develops faster than any social and administrative systems and laws that should guide it. A glaring example the world faces right now is, of course, AI. How do humans manage this powerful tool to best serve everyone, not just the few who seek to gain money or power from its use?
It’s also a reflection on the demands and complications of modern life and relationships; if we forgive those who make mistakes and under what circumstances; if we forgive ourselves for our own mistakes.
Inheritance is a gripping read that, despite its near-future setting, grapples with perplexing and troubling issues that seem all-too-real in today’s world.
It was published in 2024 by Pantera Press.
Literary + Crime: The Name of the Sister’ by Gail Jones
This very Australian novel is best described as ‘literary crime’. Crime, in that there is a crime that is central to the story line: why things in the novel play out the way they do. Literary, in the sense of its beautiful prose and the strong focus on character and theme.
The plot concerns Angie, a disillusioned journalist who is trying to make a career from freelance work. Her husband Sam is a teacher, also somewhat jaded in his chosen career. The third main character is Angie’s childhood friend Beverley, now a senior detective in the NSW Police. The three individuals and their interactions form the core of the story, around their own concerns and preoccupations and the novel’s crime.
So, to the crime. A young woman is found on a deserted road one night, near the mining town of Broken Hill in outback NSW. She can’t speak, has no ID and no one knows who she is. She becomes Unknown Woman, then given the moniker Jane.
As you might expect, the media and online social platforms are full of rumours, speculation and theories about who ‘Jane’ really is and what happened to her.
Angie is herself drawn to the story and thanks to her connection with Bev, ends up fielding calls from among the many people who contact the Police information line, certain that ‘Jane’ is their missing daughter, friend, or sister. Despite her misgivings, Angie becomes a sounding board, a witness to the loss and grief that these people have carried for months or years. It starts to become a heavy burden but she feels unable to stop.
She bears her own burdens, including her inability to have a child, and the grief of her slow realisation that her marriage was failing, her previously uncomplicated relationship with Sam becoming distant and unsatisfying. She knows that Marriages of a decade were destroyed by less: this gloom of worn expectations, this failure wholly to connect. (p21) Worse still, she doesn’t know what to do about it.
Then a family arrive from Germany to identify the Unknown Woman as their daughter who’d gone missing a couple of years earlier on a holiday in Australia. ‘Jane’ is Hannah Bloch; the mystery of her identity solved but not what had happened to her.
As Bev goes to Broken Hill to work on the case, Angie decides to join her there in the hope of…what? Distraction from her own problems? That she might have something to contribute to the police investigation? She’s not really sure.
It’s in Broken Hill that the novel’s climax takes place, a resolution of the mystery at the heart of the novel, and a revelation of the (very clever) meaning of the title.
Jones’s writing is beautiful, deftly capturing the various landscapes of inner-suburban Sydney and outback Broken Hill, along with relationships in all their wonderful supportiveness and messiness:
When Bev and Angie next met it was at Bev’s apartment, for a pizza.
Girls’ night, Bev called it; both needed to talk. They were alike in wanting the other to confirm what Angie called constitutional seriousness, how they had seen in each other – perhaps from the beginning, and certainly before they had words for it – the ability to not look away, to search for deeper meanings, to take themselves seriously.
The Name of the Sister p50-51The Name of the Sister was published in 2025 by Text Publishing.
A beautiful gift: ‘Words to Sing the World Alive’ Edited by Jasmin McGaughey & the Poet’s Voice
What do ‘first language’ or ‘mother tongue’ mean to you? The language you were born into? The first words you learnt? The language you think in, dream in: the way you see your world?
For most people, they are all of those things, and more.
Words to Sing the World Alive is a celebration of language: specifically, some of the many hundreds of First Languages that existed in Australia before European colonisation.
On their website, the publishers University of Queensland Press describe it this way:
Words to Sing the World Aliveย celebrates First Nations languages from across the continent. Forty First Nation writers and thinkers, journalists and lawyers, artists and astronomers come together to reveal their favourite and significant words. Words that evoke the power of childhood and the wonder of Country; that explore the essence of mother, of fire, of time. Words that are imbued with family and belonging, and that surprise with their connections.
UQP websitePerhaps unsurprisingly it is also a lyrical collection of great beauty and depth. Each of the short contributions offers a gem, something to consider deeply, something to learn by. Each language reflects the culture and world view of its speakers. Language can help us to deep dive into ways of seeing the big questions of life, the meaning of it, what comes before and what comes after.
Here is one of my favourite quotes from the book (and believe me, it was hard to narrow it down as there are many beautiful words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs in this slim volume):
But it’s on the tongue where this language [Wiradjuri] sings the world alive. Any one word can feel like a story, a narrative in small syllables. An arrangement of breath where my body and spirit inhabit. The muscles on my face are clunky, learning the shapes carved by rivers, known by sky. I was raised in English, and so I am finding my way back to myself through this sun-warmed language. Journeys through time, forward and back, held by language, held by Country.
Jazz Money, in Words to Sing the World Alive, p10This book reflects the language revitalisation projects taking place around the country, where endangered languages are being revived, new life breathed into words and concepts that might otherwise fade forever.
Such endeavours are so important, to reclaim what has been lost from over two hundred years of loss, forced removals from Country, separation of people from family, culture, language.
My recommendation is to take this book slowly, dipping into one or two contributions at a time. You can better savour the words offered and their stories better that way. And if you can, do so with the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Map of Indigenous Australia handy (online version available through their website here.) This will help with the geographic context of each of the languages being discussed.
As a non-indigenous Australian who loves words, I also consider the book to be yet another generous gift of great beauty from First Australians to the wider Australian community, if we care to receive it.
Words to Sing the World Alive was published by University of Queensland Press in 2024.
Love and Survival: ‘A Great Act of Love’ by Heather Rose
Heather Rose is an award-winning Tasmanian author with a range of published works across an astonishing array of genres: contemporary environmental thriller (Bruny), character-driven literary work set in a major art museum (The Museum of Modern Love), memoir (Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here), to name just three of her earlier books.
A Great Act of Love extends that range into historical fiction, as she tackles a story inspired by her own family history, returning again to the island that is her home.
Caroline Douglas comes to Tasmania (then known as Van Diemens Land) in 1839 in the guise of a young, wealthy widow with a young boy in her care as ward. She has left England after great tragedies, in which her entire world had been lost to her. She settles beside an abandoned vineyard on the outskirts of Hobart Town and tries to make sense of this upside-down world of convicts, their guards and administrators, other exiles like herself, and those who operate between the lines of order and chaos.
She has her own secrets, which are gradually revealed as the novel progresses. Secrets about her own family and about herself and her real reasons for choosing a tiny isolated speck on the map as her new home. Secrets about the reason she tries to revive the neglected vineyard on her property and dreams of establishing a champagne product to rival that of France.
Caroline quickly realises that almost everyone she meets has their own secrets and desires and she must navigate her way between truth and lies in order to survive and to progress her own goals. There are dark deeds afoot, here in this place of exile and enslavement and genocide.
Seeing white men enslaved brought Cornelius no balm. Cruelty was a boundless cycle of suffering that deserved no allegiance.
A Great Act of Love, ebook version p192 of 433There are different stories told from various perspectives: Caroline’s own, her father, her aunt, a Commandant of another penal settlement at Norfolk Island, an escaped slave from the Americas, and others. Readers get insights into what is driving Caroline and others, through these carefully meted out nuggets of information. We test and re-test theories as the novel progresses; this keeps us engaged and committed to uncovering the truth.
The setting is beautifully conveyed: an island colonised by a people who think little of killing, imprisoning, punishing other humans. But also a place of great, wild beauty.
The theme of love underlies the entire novel, but also of strength and survival and vision:
As he watches her walk back across the field in her new boots of kangaroo skin he wonders if she is yet accustomed to the sensation of the world having flung her adrift. Mostly what he’d seen of people was a yearning to take away the dread of uncertainty. To be content in the smallness. But some people seem to harbour greater thoughts. Mrs Douglas, he thinks, is doing all she can to manage this unfamiliar life and to make something of it.
A Great Act of Love, ebook version p197 of 433A Great Act of Love was published by Allen & Unwin in September 2025.
African adventures: ‘The Napoleon of Africa’ by Phil Smart
As an historical fiction lover, I was asked to review this recently published novel set in early 19th century southeastern Africa. Knowing very little about this part of the world or its history, I was intrigued. Also, I am always happy to hear from new authors. Putting a book out into the world takes hard work and commitment!
The story is about three youngsters, siblings from a British naval family, who in 1815 become stranded on the coast of Africa after a violent storm at sea. They assume that all others on board the ship, including their parents, had drowned and that they must try to survive in a very alien landscape on their own.
A dramatic start; a good hook by any measure.
Their presence is discovered by another youngster, local Zulu lad Mandlakhe, who befriends the three: brothers Nathaniel and Andrew and their younger sister, Beatrice. However it’s not long before they come to the attention of the Zulu warrior and chief Shaka, who cannily sees the political and military advantages of taking these stranded children into his care.
Another huge advantage for Shaka is that the eldest sibling, Nate, is already a shining star at the Royal Naval Academy and has an encyclopaedic knowledge of military history and the ins and outs of battle strategies across various eras. Shaka absorbs this information like a sponge: it fits into his ambitions to conquer more territory and become a great ruler of the Zulu nations, not merely a local chief.
From here the narrative is told from multiple perspectives, encompassing the multiple storylines that unfold.
There is Shaka and the others in his compound, including his favourite witchdoctor, various family members and members of his military forces.
There are the Cowen siblings, a fascinating part of the story with their own skills, passions and goals, as they become a part of the Zulu community.
There are machiavellien characters and subplots involving the acting Governor of the Portuguese colony of Mozambique; an English sea captain with plans to make it rich through trading with newly discovered or colonised territories; and assorted rival African chiefs with their own plans of conquest and rule.
There are aspects of this novel that I enjoyed and others that bothered me a bit.
There are elements of writing craft that I thought need some attention – fair enough, in a debut novel – though the author certainly knows how to tell an engaging story.
I was uncomfortable with the presentation of British (and other European) colonialism as an opportunity for personal advantage. Of course, this was certainly the attitude of the time and what attracted many to the colonial and trade game – the opportunity for adventure and making a lot of money. This book presents these attitudes perfectly, but there is no invitation for readers to reflect on what that meant for the local people in those colonised and exploited territories.
There is also an unabashed admiration for military ‘greatness’ – the title alone hints at this. Once again, an accurate representation of attitudes at the time: maybe it still is for some. I continually question this. Why do we persist in admiring mass murderers (Napoleon, Alexander the ‘Great’, Shaka himself…) and counting them among the ‘great’ figures of history? Sure, they may have been brilliant strategists or military leaders. However, they were also ruthless killers with an indifference to the consequences of their ambition.
That’s my personal view of course, and I brought that with me to the reading of this novel.
There were things I liked very much about the book, too.
The setting, for one. The author has been to this part of Africa and I understand he fell in love with the place. It was this that inspired his writing. I’ve not been there, so I can’t judge the accuracy of his setting, but his descriptive writing brought it very much to life for me.
The characters also feel believable and I enjoyed Beatrice, in particular. Her development from a frightened child to a capable and assertive young woman is beautifully portayed. And her friendship with the Zulu boy Mandlakhe is a lovely aspect of the story overall.
I liked how the author skillfully wove into his story real characters and events from the time – always welcome in a work of historical fiction.
If you enjoy adventure stories set in past times and perhaps unfamiliar settings, you will enjoy The Napoleon of Africa. There is a lot in this book to keep readers absorbed and turning the pages.
The Napoleon of Africa was published by Phil Smart in 2025.
My thanks to the author for a copy to review.
You can contact Phil at
www.philsmartauthor.com.au
In my happy place again : Blue Mountains Writers’ Festival
A week ago I basked in two days of words: novels, poetry, non-fiction; alongside the writers who put those words together in beautiful, funny or astonishing ways.
Plus, of course, fellow lovers of all things words and books.
I heard sessions with favourite authors such as Kate Grenville, Hannah Kent, Garry Disher.
A small panel discussion on ‘How to read a poem’ invited audience participation in reading, absorbing and a little unpacking of one shared poem.
I listened to a passionate discussion about the complicity of institutions, mainstream media, governments, arms manufacturers and dealers in genocide, at Antony Loewenstein and Randa Abdel-Fattah’s session ‘After Zionism‘. They concluded that genocide needs to be made unprofitable, that we should all support independent media and journalism, and that Israel has become a ‘poster child’ of sorts for oppressive and fascist regimes of all religious and cultural backgrounds.
A moving and thought-provoking session about a recent collaborative book titled Blue Mountains Aboriginal Elders: Stories From Our Hearts generously invited us to reflect on their stories and experiences and treated listeners to two marvellous poems by Biripi poet Brian Bell, who has made his home in the Blue Mountains.
Audience anticipation builds before a sold-out festival session 
Left to right: Nicole Abadee interviewing Kate Grenville; Blue Mountains Aboriginal Elders discussing their collective book; Garry Disher & Candace Fox talking crime and writing in ‘Repeat Offenders’
Highlights?
A number one standout was the session by Jasmine McGaughey, Daniel Browning and Merinda Dutton discussing the UQP- published anthology Words to Sing the World Alive: Celebrating First Nations Languages (2024). Forty First Nations writers, journalists, thinkers, artists, and others were asked to contribute one word from their first or heritage language, with a short piece about the word’s meaning and its personal significance for them.
The result is an accessible collection of incredible lyricism and grace. I had a strict limit on the number of books I allowed myself to buy at this festival (two) and this one was my number one purchase. I will be writing more about this book in a later post.
Hannah Kent was big drawcard. A popular and award-winning author, she unfortunately couldn’t attend in person due to illness, but was able to Zoom into her session. The packed room was not disappointed as we heard lively stories about her road to becoming a published writer, some hilarious and moving anecdotes of her time as an exchange student in Iceland which led to her debut novel Burial Rites, some of which are retold in her recent memoir Always Home, Always Homesick. (My review of that one is here.) Hannah is an engaging and sympathetic speaker and her interview with Amy Sambrooke a definite shining star in a packed program.
As was Kate Grenville’s discussion of her own recent memoir Unsettled: A Journey Through Time and Place (Black Inc Books, 2025.) I reviewed this one recently. Kate suggested that while the Reconciliation movement has achieved some positives and comes from a good place, it now seems to her that a Reconciliation event like the Sorry Walk across Sydney Harbour bridge (in 2000, to express sorrow for the policies and actions that resulted in what are now called the Stolen Generations) was something of a metaphor, involving as it did a bridge across an expanse of deep water. Perhaps white Australia was too eager to do reconciliation without ‘getting their feet wet’. In other words, without doing the hard work of deep reflection, learning, knowing and understanding.
Food for thought there.
And for a lighter note, I found the duo of crime and thriller novelists Garry Disher and Candace Fox both engrossing and occasionally hilarious (especially the latter’s reflections on the lengths she has gone to in her research for books.)
As an example, she once sat with a serial killer in an American prison for five hours, trying to understand what made him ‘tick.’ Turns out, he was not smart, mysterious or magnetic – just a horrible narcissist. Candace’s comment on that: ‘I’ve dated horrible narcissists. He was nothing special.’
The prolific and best-selling authors had tips for the aspiring writers in the audience and some insights into their own writing processes. Garry writes all his first drafts in blue biro on the back of manuscript pages! (He is adamant that if he uses a black biro, ‘all the magic drains away.’) In between writing, Candace is a WIRES native wildlife rescue volunteer and along with her six-year-old daughter has effected over 600 rescues so far.
These are the kinds of lovely tidbits that readers can hear from their favourite authors at a literary festival.
Congratulations to Varuna, the National Writers’ House in Katoomba, for this year’s very successful festival. It’s a big event and a lot of hard work goes into making everyone feel comfortable and welcome, and keeping things running smoothly behind the scenes.
I’m now looking forward to once again being in my happy place at next year’s festival.
The story of a story: ‘Always Home, Always Homesick’ by Hannah Kent
Are you fascinated by how stories are created? Where does a writer, filmmaker, or songwriter get that first spark, the idea that grabs them and insists tell this story.
It’s something I have always been interested in. I love learning about how a movie goes from storyboard to opening night, or how a lick of a guitar riff becomes a hit song.
I pored over Kate Grenville’s In Search of the Secret River in which she details the research and other preparation that went into the writing of her best-selling historical novel The Secret River. Likewise her more recent Unsettled, a memoir of coming to terms with uncomfortable truths in our personal, family and national history, also relevant to that ground-breaking earlier work.
So I was delighted to pick up a copy of Hannah Kent’s latest work, Always Home, Always Homesick.
In a way, it’s the story of how she wrote her best-known story to date, Burial Rites, first published in 2013. This historical novel was based on the tragic real-life character of Agnes Magnusdottir who was tried for her role in the brutal murder of two men on a remote farm in Iceland in the 1800s. Agnes was found guilty and was the last woman to be executed in Iceland.
Hannah learned of Agnes and her fate while she was a young student in Iceland on a year’s Rotary Exchange program. If the novel’s subject matter had not already interested me, the circumstances of its beginnings certainly did, because decades before Hannah set off on her exchange adventure, I had done likewise – to the USA, not Iceland – but like Hannah, leaving family and home behind for a year to live with several different families in the town to which I was sent.
I was intrigued that this young woman was so captivated by a story from her host country that after her return to Australia, Agnes’s fate stayed in her mind. Hannah returned to Iceland several times, including to conduct research in Icelandic archives and museums but also in the places Agnes lived, worked and eventually died. All of these experiences went into the book that quickly became a global best-seller and launched the author’s literary career.
Always Home, Always Homesick is, at its core, a ‘love letter’ to the country that changed her life. She writes about the moment she decided to apply for the Rotary exchange program and why, that This is the thing that will lead me further into life, that will allow me to breathe lung-deep of it. (ebook p54)
Then the excitement and trepidation of preparing for her year away, trying to learn about Iceland and its language at a time when there was not the ready access to such information as we now have. Donning the rather ghastly Rotary exchange student uniform (the green blazer with its Australiana pins obviously not changed much since my time in the late 1970s…) and hoping that the Rotary contact meeting her at the airport is on time and will recognise her as the exchange student. Getting on that plane takes courage and hope.
I remember all those feelings!
Then the confusion of arriving in a foreign land where customs and behaviours can be so different. And for Hannah, trying to quickly pick up an entirely new language from scratch. Starting school almost immediately on arrival – a daunting proposition. Loneliness and feeling isolated to start with, until breaking through with a warm, friendly family who welcome her as one of their own. Again, there were some echoes of my own time on exchange here.
She experiences the full gamut of Iceland’s seasonal changes and its stark, dramatic beauty, and begins to channel her feelings about it into writing:
I am falling in love with Iceland, and I need to articulate the hold it has over me. My writing, once a balm for solitude and lonliness, takes on a euphoric urgency. Writing now feels like prayer.
Always Home, Always Homesick ebook p192
When her exchange year is over and she returns to Australia, she studies creative writing and works seriously on her craft. But Agnes’s story is always in her mind so it is inevitable that when she returns to the embrace of her new-found family and friends, the research becomes another focus for her time there.
This was also of great interest to me: having trailed around historic sites in Australia and England in search of places of significance in stories I wanted to tell, I loved reading about this aspect of her writing. The hours spent in Icelandic archives, painstakingly examining census documents for a glimpse of Agnes or her family. Translating old documents into English. Taking hundreds of photos in museums. Reading, listening and watching archival and modern-day accounts of Agnes’s life, crime, trial and execution.
All the things that go into the story of a story.
Always Home, Always Homesick was published by Picador in 2025.
Buried secrets? ‘Treasure and Dirt’ by Chris Hammer
Published in 2022, Treasure and Dirt is set in the fictional outback NSW town of Finnigan’s Gap, loosely based on Lightening Ridge, famous for its opals.
Chris Hammer does ‘place’ brilliantly in all his novels. As Sydney-based Homicide detective Ivan Lucic steps off the plane at the Finnigan’s Gap airstrip to investigate the bizarre murder of a long-time resident and miner, readers can feel the slap of the heat as it hits him, dressed as he is in city clothes. The heat and the surrounding landscape of the town become characters in themselves, factors that locals and visitors alike must navigate simply to exist in this unforgiving environment.
There are multiple layers to the crime and the investigation. The murder itself, of course, and the complexities surrounding motive, method and circumstances that are revealed as the detectives begin their work.
Lucic is assisted by an inexperienced detective, Nell Buchanan, who had previously been stationed at Finnigan’s Gap and so has valuable local knowledge. She sees this as her big chance to make her mark, get started on the ladder of successful solves while working alongside a well-known Detective like Lucic.
However their early encounters leave Nell with mixed feelings; she isn’t sure what to make of him. Having read later books featuring the Ivan and Nell team, such as The Tilt and The Seven, I enjoyed reading their ‘back story’: their first time working together, with all the awkwardness and unfamiliarity that comes with that.
Another complicating layer in this investigation is thrown in by the police Professional Standards unit: a whiff of corruption or wrongdoing always throws the cat among the pigeons, after all. There are corporate mega-rich who seem to act with total impunity (just imagine!!) lots of hard-drinking, hard-living, worn out miners leading somewhat eccentric lives (to put it mildly), a small team of local police with their own issues to deal with, and a twenty-year old family tragedy. Oh, and a local cult led by a pretty bizarre chap who calls himself the Seer.
Just your everyday outback community, then.
Maybe not, but it does make for a heady mix for our investigators to dig through in their search for answers.
In the end, they are unable to tie everything up with a neat bow. Much more like real life, I suspect. Towards the novel’s final pages, Nell reflects that:
They’ve achieved something, she and Ivan. Maybe not enough, but something. Brought justice to some, resolution to others. She looks to her partner and realises that she likes him. At last, she likes him. Understands him, respects him. Maybe even admires him. A good man, trying his best.
Treasure and Dirt, p703 (ebook)Treasure and Dirt was published in 2022 by Allen and Unwin.
Bringing history to life: ‘Free’ by Meg Keneally
Meg Keneally’s first stand-alone historical fiction Fled (published 2019) was inspired by the true story of Mary Bryant, a First Fleet convict who effected a daring escape from Sydney by boat. This was followed up by The Wreck (2020) which featured events that followed on from the notorious Peterloo Massacre in England, and introduced readers to Mary Thistle – a character inspired by another amazing historical figure, Mary Reibey. It is Molly Thistle who is at the centre of Fled.
The novel opens with young Molly, living in poverty with her grandmother in England. When she is sent to work as a scullery maid in a wealthy household and find herself bullied and compromised by the master’s valet, she sees no option but to escape. But she does it on horseback – on the master’s valuable mare, and dressed as a boy.
This part of the story echoes something of the origins of Mary Reibey, who was arrested at a very young age for horse theft (and also while dressed as a boy.)
From here Molly experiences all of the horrors of the British ‘justice’ system of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The courts where the poor had no voice. The appalling overcrowded gaols where men, women and children were thrown together, and survival of the fittest was the only rule that mattered. Molly quickly learns the rules, adapts – and survives.
On arrival in Sydney Town Molly is rowed upriver to the Parramatta Female Factory – another gaol for female convicts, which also served as a workhouse, maternity hospital and a ‘marriage market’ (where free settlers and emancipists could come in search of a wife.) I enjoyed the scenes here, as the author, like myself, has an ancestor who was an inmate of the Female Factory. Ms Keneally is a Patron of the Friends of Parramatta Female Factory and gives great support to their work.
Molly’s fortunes take a turn for the better when she marries Angus Thistle, a free settler whom she met on the transport ship. For many convict women, marriage was often the way to a better future, although to the small colonial society at the time, taking a convict wife was still frowned upon. A mistress? Perfectly acceptable and very common for military officers, free settlers and emancipists. Even a governor. Having a wife and family back in Britain was no impediment for a man taking a convict women to his bed and fathering a whole new gaggle of children in the colony. But marrying her? That was often seen as a step too far.
Molly was no simpering, decorative accessory to Angus. She works just as hard as he. Early in their marriage they build a wattle-and-daub hut together on the banks of the Hawkesbury, the wilder reaches of the colony, where the river bursts its banks and destroys farms and homes with unpredictable ferocity. Molly experiences this.
She also learns about the ferocity of the so-called ‘frontier wars’ between the original people of the region, fighting to protect their land and livlihood, and the invaders, determined to make the place theirs. Some of the stories turn her stomach with their cruelty and make her look at her fellow settlers with new, jaundiced eyes. She befriends an Aboriginal woman with a baby, just like Molly’s own new baby, and finds the stories even harder to stomach, begging Angus to move them back into Sydney to live, away from the violence.
So they do, and their family grows along with their fortunes, as Angus and Molly’s trading and ship building business flourishes. If you visit Sydney today and walk along Circular Quay to where the old warehouses are, you might imagine Molly visiting their warehouse, admiring the many different goods that Angus brings home from his voyages to far-off places. Goods that the settler communities – those with money to pay – crave: Indian muslin, tea from China, spices, wooden furniture, fine china and glassware, tobacco, the latest fashions from London…
It is Molly’s business acumen, organisational and financial skills that allows their commercial interests to prosper despite ruthless competition from other traders in the colony.
The novel includes references to the many characters and events that made Australia’s early colonial years so colourful: a succession of Governors, a military coup, corrupt officers and venal landowners, a hypocritical churchman, all fictionalised but easily identified. This is perhaps one of my hesitations about the novel. On the one hand I do understand that peopling the story with a fictionalised version of historical figures gives the author more room to play, so to speak, to move people and events around to suit the narrative; on the other hand I think it can add richness and depth to the story to have these people live in their own skin.
Anyway, that is a minor point and each writer of historical fiction makes their own judgement about this when it comes to the story they want to write.
And the story of Molly Thistle is a beauty, as is the story of the woman she was inspired by – Mary Reibey. As I wrote in my review of Grantlee Kieza’s terrific biography of the real Mary, The Remarkable Mrs Reibey, there are some overlaps between her story and that of my own convict ancestor, Jane Longhurst, another early colonial woman who survived the convict years to become a wealthy and successful businesswoman, in a place and time when being both a woman and an ex-convict should not have allowed it.
Meg Keneally has brought Mary’s world to us in a different form, through another woman’s story. As I often say, the early history of modern Australia is quite an extraordinary one, much more interesting than I remember from my school history lessons! Stories like this help to bring our true history to life.
Free was published by Echo Publishing in 2024.
