Flipping the script: ‘Looking from the North’ by Henry Reynolds
Have you ever seen a map of the world that is not the standard Mercator-type, but which depicts the continents and their positions in a way that is more true to life? If so, you’ll know that slightly unsettling feeling of gazing at a depiction of our planet that just looks weird, or so different to what you are used to, as it challenges deep assumptions about world geography.
Reading Looking from the North felt a bit like that for me. Having been born, raised and educated (and lived the majority of my life) in the southeast of Australia, my ‘take’ on our national story was, I see now, very much from a ‘looking from the south’ perspective. This book shook that up in a mildly unsettling, but also refreshing, way.
Historian Henry Reynolds is known for his truth-telling take on Australia’s national stories, and this book continues in that vein, with his hope that this nuanced view can shift mainstream Australian thinking, to reassess our story of colonisation but also understand our distinctive variant of decolonisation. (p5) He traverses events in Australia from the British act of colonisation in 1788 through to the Uluru Statement from the Heart, and everything in between.
Some of the major themes and events he considers really made me stop and think, including:
- Colonisation happened in two distinct phases, the second of which took place largely in the vast ’empty’ centre and north and played out very differently from the earlier colonisation of the south. Because the British government had handed over control of the new colonies of Queensland (1859) and the Northern Territory (to the colony of South Australia in 1863), moral responsibility to First Nations people therein was also handed over.
This is why the settlement of northern Australia is different. It was an Australian, not a British venture. For better or worse it is our responsiblity. We cannot escape from it or from its latter-day consequences with which we still live. (p15) - ‘Opening up’ land in the north for white settlers carried with it the same devastating consquences for the First Nations there. The hunger of Europeans – for land, gold, ownership – was the same as it had been half a century before, but the way it was assuaged sometimes differed from the south.
In both cases, though, The insouciance of both government and settlers was staggering. So too was their ignorance. They knew so little about the country itself and the people they were so ruthlessly usurping. (p23) - There were killing times (sometimes known as ‘frontier wars’ or appropriately, the ‘Australian wars’) in both north and south, though the environments, the demographics and the trajectories differed. But the litany of resistance, violent reprisals, and hideous atrocities are depressingly similar. In some places peaceful resolution, of sorts, did eventuate, though they tend to be less well-known: The attempt by both settler and First Nations communities to manage the process of reconciliation as the era of open warfare came to an end has rarely been studied by Australian historians. (p39)
- The pastoral industry in the tropical north was completely dependent on the resident First Nations workforce. (p62) Though this fact did not translate into decent payment or working conditions.
- Readers of David Marr’s forensic and harrowing work Killing for Country (2023) (my review) will no doubt agree with Reynold’s view that the story of the Native Police represents one of the most egregious, shameless chapters in the history of Australian colonisation. (p69)
- When Australia became a federated nation, a growing national obsession with racial purity led to the disgracefully long-lived policy of White Australia, under which people of Asian, Pacific Islander, and other ‘non-white’ backgrounds were ruthlessly expelled or barred from the country. This included many who had made their homes and had families in northern centres like Cairns, Darwin, Thursday Island, and Mackay. It also included labourers who had been brought here (some willingly, some less so) in the so-called ‘Blackbirding’ era, to work on sugar plantations. Not surprisingly, the expulsions and bans also had devastating effects on the economies and communities involved.
- This period also coincided with a convenient sort of amnesia about even the recent past, because The new nation hungered for worthy foundation stories to nurture collective pride. Peaceful conquest of country was a far more appealing story than bloody conquest for the land. (pp77-78)
- The White Australia policy did not die a much-deserved death until 1973. By then world opinion on issues of race was shifting and moves in international spaces, such as the United Nations’ International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965) pushed national governments to enact laws to protect citizens from discrimination.
- Meanwhile, the Indigenous land rights movements were gathering force in Australia. A rocky road; but the book outlines the Yirrkala Bark Petitions (discussed in Clare Wright’s wonderful 2024 Naku Dharuk (my review), the Mabo and the Wik cases as significant in the gains made in the second half of the twentieth century.
I have listed so many points here to show just how much Reynolds includes in this book, which is nevertheless a slim and easy-to-read publication. If you enjoy a book that will teach you something new, give a different perspective on familar events, and continue the important work of truth-telling about our nation’s history, you will enjoy Looking from the North.
Looking from the North was published by NewSouth in 2025.
- Colonisation happened in two distinct phases, the second of which took place largely in the vast ’empty’ centre and north and played out very differently from the earlier colonisation of the south. Because the British government had handed over control of the new colonies of Queensland (1859) and the Northern Territory (to the colony of South Australia in 1863), moral responsibility to First Nations people therein was also handed over.
Humble life lessons: ‘Parting Words’ by Benjamin Ferencz
On Ben Ferencz’s website, his last book Parting Words is introduced as follows:
How many people do you know grew up as a poor immigrant in America during the Great Depression, won a scholarship to Harvard Law School, landed on the beaches of Normandy on D Day, were present at the liberation of concentration camps including Buchenwald, Mauthausen and Flossenburg, held leading Nazis to account at the Nuremberg trials and have fought for an International Criminal Court to hold war criminals to account the world over?
https://benferencz.org/books/parting-words-10-little-lessons-for-a-remarkable-life/
Now you know one.
Benjamin Ferencz turned 100 in 2020. In this extraordinary book, he shares his remarkable life story and the nine humble, compelling and life-affirming lessons he’s learned along the way that we can all harness for ourselves.This slender little book tells an amazing story of a truly incredible life, and it offers the gift of the lessons he learned while living it.
A man of humility, humour and wisdom, Ben Ferencz’s achievements belied his small stature and disavantaged background. His life mission was to help create a more peaceful and humane world. Despite endless disheartening news cycles, his optimism and hope never failed him.
Parting Words weaves together stories about his life, family, and work at home in the US and on the world stage, with some of the essential things he learned along the way. What I loved most is that these are not expressed in opaque, philosophical language, but as everyday easily understood phrases, and given alongside the circumstances that led him to this point of view. Some events were prosaic, everyday; others less so (like witnessing the horrors of the Nazi death camps, or helping establish the International Criminal Court.)
His nine key lessons touch on life circumstances, hopes and dreams, education, principles, life trajectories, truth, love, stamina, the future…and include:- You don’t have to follow the crowd
- Learn where you are
- Choose to be good
- The path is always bumpy, never straight
- Always speak your truth, even if no one’s listening
Buy a copy; I promise you will not regret it.
Buy several copies, because I’m pretty sure you will want to press this book into many hands while saying, Read this! In fact, my husband bought an extra copy for our young teen grandson. It makes an ideal gift for a young person embarking on this business of life, and for anyone feeling jaded by theirs, or by the world around them.Parting Words was written with Nadia Khomami and published by Sphere in 2020.
New review series: Library Treasures
What book lover doesn’t also love a library?
Our public libraries are places of connection and learning and offer the precious gift of books at minimal or no cost to the reader.And there is so much to adore about the newer phenomenon of street libraries: sharing, reciprocity and sustainability embodied in a humble cupboard or shelf outside someone’s home, for any and all to borrow from and contribute to.
I use and love both forms of libraries, so I thought it about time that I occasionally write about the treasures I find there.
These will usually be older books rather than new releases – though who knows what I’ll find at my local libraries or street cupboards?
Perhaps someone will be prompted to seek out a book at their local library if it sounds like their cup of tea.
First book off the shelf:
‘The Body: A Guide for Occupants’ by Bill Bryson
I enjoy Bryson’s writing, his quirky dry humour influenced by his birthplace, America, and also Britain where he spent many of his adult years. His travel writing is especially funny and insightful, though in more recent times he has expanded out into many other areas of non-fiction: history and science writing, for example. The Body is a bit of a blend of both.
It’s a big volume: 386 pages, not including notes and index. Bryson’s writing style is engaging, so even for someone like me (generally very much not a reader of science-related topics) it doesn’t feel like a slog.
It’s divided into chapters that traverse the main components of the human body, from our hearts and brains, skeletons, all the chemical wizardry that keeps us ticking along, what and how we eat, speak, see and hear…you get the idea.
The book is also chock full of amazing tidbits that kept me gasping: I didn’t know that!
Turns out there is so much about this body we inhabit from birth to death, that most of us are completely in the dark about.
Just a few examples:
- We all have more than a metre of DNA packed into every cell, and so many cells that put into a single strand, they would stretch ten billion miles to beyond Pluto. Enough to leave the solar system. You are in the most literal sense cosmic. p5
- Studies have shown the astounding (and to be honest, rather shocking) ways in which viruses and bacteria can spread from one human to another. One US study showed that a pretend virus spread from a door handle to an entire office building in just four hours, turning up on virtually every surface. p36
Wash your hands, people! - Motion sickness causes nausea because the body thinks it is being poisoned. p88
As a lifelong travel sickness sufferer, I’m not sure that is reassuring, but still interesting. - Our sense of smell is unbelievably complex, involving huge numbers of chemical compounds and various processes in our brains as well as our noses. p90
- Our kidneys produce a bathtub’s worth of water and salt every day. p155
Don’t forget to hydrate!
And many, many more jaw-dropping, humourous or simply wondrous facts…
Along the way are fascinating stories of how many of these facts were discovered, the personalities (dedicated, obsessive, or sometimes downright weird) of researchers who uncovered them. Some of these made me very glad to be alive now, not in medieaval times or even a century ago.
The final chapter is, of course, about the process of dying, and illustrates how much we still don’t know abut this normal, common, necessary but mysterious process.
All in all, The Body: A Guide for Occupants is an engrossing read, an absolute library treasure.
I’m grateful to my wonderful book group because the reason I borrowed it from my local library is that it is the first book set for our group for 2026. I might not have picked it up, otherwise, but I am very glad I did.The Body: A Guide for Occupants was published by Doubleday (an imprint of Penguin Books) in 2019.
Library photos by Sean Ingram and Rafael Cosquiere at pexels.
What if kindness? ‘A Different Kind of Power’ by Jacinda Ardern
Just before Jacinda Ardern was sworn in as New Zealand’s 40th Prime Minister in 2017, she was asked by a journalist what was it she wanted to do in the role: the ‘untethered, big-picture stuff.’ Her response was:
‘I want this government to feel different…I want people to feel that it’s open, that it’s listening, and that it’s going to bring kindness back.’In her memoir, A Different Kind of Power, she writes that at that moment she recognised that kindness was the word that encompassed everything that had left an imprint on her, from her childhood, her parents, her community and the people she’d worshipped alongside or worked with, ‘always in the service of something better.’
Some people thought kindness was sentimental, soft. A bit naive, even. I knew this. But I also knew they were wrong. Kindness has a power and strength that almost nothing on this planet has. I’d seen kindness do extraordinary things: I’d seen it give people hope; I’d seen it change minds and transform lives. I wasn’t afraid to say it aloud, and as soon as I did, I was sure: kindness. This would be my guiding principle no matter what lay ahead.
A Different Kind of Power p202I was so pleased to be gifted this book (thank you, Andy!) written by a world leader who showed us all that leadership does not have to be cuthroat, that power does not have to mean ‘power over’ but can mean empowering others, and that kindness can, indeed, be part of the equation.
The narrative encompasses those early influences: her warm loving family and a childhood in small communities; mostly happy memories despite some challenges along the way. A young political awakening because of the sights and sounds of her first childhood community, and a burgeoning awareness of how poverty and other circumstances can push a community and its people into difficulty. Different grandparents and the various lessons absorbed from each.
Initial volunteer political work, education, leading to her first paid roles in the world of politics. Becoming a Member of Parliament (I still can’t get my head around New Zealand’s electoral system, but thank goodness for it, as it allowed Jacinda to take on this role, which ultimately – and to her and others, somewhat unexpectedly – culminated in the Prime Ministerial position.)
She writes about the highlights and lowlights of her time in politics and as PM, which of course you’d expect in a political memoir. If you have followed the news over that period you’d be aware of some of the biggest challenges she faced: the shocking and brutal shootings at a Christchurch mosque in 2019; a volcanic eruption at a major tourist attraction, and of course the Covid global pandemic.
Because of the very personal style of writing about these events, I found myself wondering ‘what would I have done? How would I have reacted?’ What I took from her memories of these times is that the personal, empathetic component of a leader’s response is just as important, if not more so, than the logistical resources and decisions he or she can implement.
The scene inside a crisis centre where she met with victims of the Christchurch attack and their loved ones, is vividly portrayed. She had to balance the need for police and forensic procedures at the crime scene, followed by official identification of the victims, with the urgent need for their families for a quick burial as required by their Muslim faith. Understandably there was grief, anger, and confusion in the room. Knowing how important both empathy and clear communication were at this time, she managed to achieve a calm stillness where minutes before had been a cacophony of noise and distress. She writes: ‘Perhaps even bad news can be better than unanswered questions.’ (p248)
I would agree. I would add: it also depends on how that news is delivered, and by whom.
I especially loved the personal insights she shares along the way of her story: crying in a bathroom stall after an error which saw her chastised as a new staffer in Parliament; feeling that her sensitivity was her ‘tragic flaw’ that would keep her from staying with the political work she loved. Meeting Clarke, her partner; their journey to parenthood to Neve. (The opening scene of the book has to be the best hook ever. I won’t describe it here for fear of a spoiler, but it’s brilliant.) Juggling family and political life.
She describes her decision to leave the Prime Minister’s office and politics, and her reasons why, none of which come as a surprise when thinking about the person she is. I was pleased, though, to read that she has continued her advocacy and her work for hope and kindness since leaving office, through establishing a Field Fellowship for empathetic leadership, academic work at Harvard university, climate action work, and support for the Christchurch Call to Action to eliminate terrorist and extremist content online, among other projects.
At a time when so-called ‘strong men’ seem to hold parts of the global population in their sway, we need more leaders like Jacinda Ardern, not just in politics. It often seems to me that simply increasing the number of women in political or CEO roles does little to change things for the rest of us, if they are operating on the ‘business as usual’ principle. More of the ‘kindness principle’ may help to rectify that.
A Different Kind of Power is published by Penguin Random House in June 2025
A failed experiement? ‘Republic’ by Alice Hunt
I grew up on tales from Australian and British history and like many history enthusiasts, was especially captivated by the medieaval and Tudor periods in Britain. The Civil War era of the seventeenth century was not of particualr interest – until I listened to the episodes of David Crowther’s excellent History of England podcast series recounting the events leading up to the Civil Wars and the Republican experiment. I realised that the events of this period are actually fascinating, due to the complexities of the political landscape and the radicalism of the debates.
So when I had the opportunity to review Alice Hunt’s new book about this time, I was all in.
Subtitled ‘Britain’s Revolutionary Decade 1649-1660, each chapter takes one year and examines in detail the events, characters, competing ideas of that twelve months. It begins with the execution of King Charles I, so no spoiler there. This event, in itself, was quite extraordinary: the sanctioned killing of an annointed king after a legal process found him guilty of betraying the sacred oaths taken at his coronation, and responsible for the bloody wars that divided the kingdom between ‘Royalists’ and ‘Parliamentarians’.
Then came the events that followed, all quite extraordinary in themselves: the sale of the royal family’s property and goods (a sort of vast garage sale that went on for years); the shocking violence in Ireland under Cromwell’s direction; the attempts at reconciliation between the opposing factions within the nation and within parliament; the various iterations of parliament itself; the moment when parliament offered Cromwell the chance to become king himself…just to name a few.
The author concludes that:
The civil wars did not set out to kill the king and bring down monarchy but, by their end, a republic settlement was not only entertained but also, by some, desired.
Republic p30
There are stories of some of the interesting personalities of the time, some known to me (like Christopher Wren or John Milton) and others not so much (Katherine Jones, Robert Boyle).
Amongst the explosive political and legal events were others that, while not made up of ‘grand gestures’ nevertheless had important and long-standing effects. The readmission of Jewish people to Britain was one such. The beginnings of the Quaker movement another. The rising interest in natural sciences, philosphy, language, clocks, telescopes, horticulture, laying the foundation for modern science as we think of it today. It was during this decde that ideas of representative democracy, closer to the sense we think of it today than the ancient Greek version, were widely written and talked about.
This detailed but accessible book, paints vivid images of the turmoil and chaos of this period, of how the idea of a republic was being worked out on the run.
Understanding this goes some way to modifying the astonishment I might otherwise feel, knowing that at the end of this ‘revolutionary decade’, another Stuart (Charles II) was invited back to take up the British throne once more.
On finishing this book, I did wonder if the current monarch, another Charles, will read it and if so, what he might make of the goings-on of this decade from the past? Are there lessons from these years that speak to the current threats and opportunities for the British monarchy today? Or for those who hope that their country will once again, become a republic?
Republic: Britain’s Revolutionary Decade is published in 2024 by Faber & Faber.
My thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for a review copy.
Sibling trouble: ‘My Father’s Suitcase’ by Mary Garden
I reviewed NZ-born Mary Garden’s biography of her aviator father, Oscar Garden, back in 2021. In it, she referred to the unsettled, troubled family in which she grew up.
My Father’s Suitcase takes this several steps further. It opens with a physical attack on Mary, apparently out of the blue, by her younger sister Anna when they were both in their fifties. We know immediately that things are still not right in the Garden family.
This time the narrative centers on an all-too-common but often overlooked issue: sibling abuse. Another manifestation of the troubling problem of family violence, it has not received the (thankfully increasing) attention that has been directed at intimate partner abuse. But Mary’s story makes clear that the lasting effects of family violence, no matter who is perpetrated by, can be debilitating.
It also raises questions about family inheritances. Are genetics primarily responsible for mental ill health in families? Did a legacy of instability, depression and anxiety originate from Oscar’s bipolar disorder, his emotional repressiveness and oppressive behaviour towards his wife and, to varying degrees, their children?
All of the hallmarks of abuse are outlined in this book: the unpredictability of violent outbursts, gaslighting, a failure to intervene appropriately by those who should do so, scapegoating. And for the victim of the abuse? Shame, depression, guilt.
Having had my own experience of someone who (I’m now certain) suffered from an undiagnosed bipolar disorder, and experiencing many of the hallmarks of an abusive relationship, I felt a great deal of sympathy for the author while reading this book.
There were moments when I was shocked at her own responses to the situations she found herself in, but by her own admission, she too was acting out of a desperate and unstable mental state, the result of an intergenerational trauma that was then (in the mid-twentieth century) unrecognised and rarely, if ever, discussed.
Although much of this story took place in her birthplace of New Zealand, there are striking similarities between that country and Australia in the decades she describes. Conservative, relatively isolated nations, with little understanding and even fewer resources to help people deal with trauma or depression. Mental health services that by the 1990’s relied on programs in the community, leaving many sufferers isolated and uncared for, and their families increasingly desperate. A rejection by the post-war ‘baby boomer’ generation of the values and choices of their elders; a turn towards Eastern spirituality and/or counter culture in a search for something different. Tumultuous times indeed.
This memoir shares questions in common with memoir writing generally: Whose truth is being told? What version of events and people do we receive? Family disputes are always messy and usually damaging. Does it help to air them in public?
I would often answer ‘no’ to this question. But this memoir offers more than one’s person response to events. In her brutal ‘warts and all’ honesty, the author has highlighted some important and timely issues that we all need to understand. And she certainly is not painting an image of herself as a passive victim, acknowledging and questioning as she does her own behaviour and the family legacy of such:
Even though somewhere deep down I knew I was making a fool of myself and behaving erratically, I kept going. In that I was like my father. People had thought he was mad, too, when he flew from England to Australia in his second-hand Gypsy Moth. He did not give up. It was a miracle his little plane did not break down on his 19-day flight. He was determined to survive. Luck was on his shoulder. Luck was on mine also.
My Father’s Suitcase p204When her sister publishes a book about their father’s career hot on the heels of Mary’s own, very successful biography, it raises issues of plagiarism and copyright law, complicated matters which teams of lawyers deal with regularly. Even so, it made me wonder how much plagiarism goes undetected in published works.
This candid account of the ‘weird, crazy Gardens’ is a gripping story that finishes on a hopeful note: of recovery, of different choices leading to better health and a happier life. As such it offers some insight into what people can do to move on from the legacy of mental ill health and family abuse.
My Father’s Suitcase is published by Justitia Books in May 2024. My thanks to the author for a review copy.
‘Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind’ by Yoval Noah Harari
While we homo sapiens might feel pleased to be the species that has seemingly evolved to ‘rule the world’, this book should give pause for thought.
It’s a sweeping story of our history: how we evolved and separated from other human species such as the Neanderthals, why we have paid a price for the development of our relatively large brains, how the ‘cognitive revolution’ distinguished our species from other animals (and what we have done with this advantage since), how and why myths such as gods, race, nationalities, money and human rights were created.
There are some ideas that I am certain would be controversial to some, including:
- the ‘agricultural revolution’ actually resulted in humankind spending more time and effort feeding itself than in hunter-gatherer communities
- it is possible that, far from grains such as wheat or rice being ‘domesticated’ by humans, it could be the other way around: that these grains trained humans to spend huge amounts of labour tending them, allowing them to become masters of the grain world.
- the three unifying forces of humankind have been money, empire and religion, and of these:
- capitalism is the most successful religion invented by humans, requiring high levels of trust to operate effectively.
Sapiens is definitely a thought-provoking book. Always interested in the ‘back story’ in how things came to be as they are, I found the historic elements deeply fascinating.
The last section of the book ventures into territory which for me was far less comfortable, involving scary questions about the future of humankind, as technological developments seemingly outpace our collective ability to predict where they might lead or to place conditions on their use.
First published in 2015, the questions in this book are now more relevant than ever, surrounded as we are by the growth of cyborg, genetic and other technologies which could conceivably lead to the end of homo sapien and even devolution into a new species.
More questions than answers; but perhaps a book of this nature needs to raise issues that can’t be easily addressed. If the idea is to make readers sit up and take notice, to think more deeply about the rapid pace of change, and to appreciate our collective past as a species, Sapiens achieves this very well indeed.
Books like this should be read by scientists, ethicists, teachers, medical professionals and legislators, because these are the people holding the reins of our collective future.
Sapiens was published by Vintage (an imprint of Penguin Books.)
I listened to the audiobook version, also released in 2015 and read in English by Derek Perkins.
He put Australia on the map: ‘Flinders’ by Grantlee Kieza
Imagine being proposed to by letter, then marrying in a small and hasty ceremony, acting on your new husband’s assurances that you would be joining him on his next voyage on a British naval ship; only to learn that you would not, in fact, be granted permission to do so. You bid a sad farewell to your beloved, having been married a matter of weeks. Off he sails, to explore and chart a vast southern continent on the other side of the globe.
You do not see your husband again for nearly a decade.
This is what happened to Ann Chappelle, who married Matthew Flinders in Lincolnshire, England, in 1801. To say that her new husband was impulsive and careless, as Kieza describes him, is an understatement. However it is also true that he was a man of his age, ambitious, curious about the world, passionate about science and the sea, keen to venture into the unknown. And there is no question that he adored his wife.
Reading this detailed and vivid account of the life of an extraordinary figure of Australia’s early colonial history, I discovered some personal links with my own family history. One is that he came from the same part of England from where my paternal ancestors migrated in the mid-1800s, the marshy fens of Lincolnshire. His lifelong mentor, the botanist Joseph Banks, was also born there.
From an early age Matthew wanted more than a small life in a small village, working as a physician like his father. He was attracted to the sea and inspired by the adventures of Captain James Cook and Banks on the Endeavour, and he joined the navy when he was sixteen.
He first served under another famous figure, William Bligh, experiencing terrifying battles against the French, voyages to Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania), Tahiti, the Cook Islands, Tonga, Fiji, through the treacherous reefs of the Torres Strait, to Jamaica and then back to England. In most of those places there were encounters with the original inhabitants, as well as astonishing new sights, sounds, smells and foods, and Matthew developed his charting skills which would become such an important part of his work. It is hard to overstate how much these experiences would have affected a youngster from a small, quiet corner of England.
He was to have command of his own ships of exploration: most famously the tiny Tom Thumb, on which (along with surgeon George Bass) he explored areas around the Sydney settlement and beyond. Later they circumnavigated Tasmania and proved it was an island, separate from the mainland of ‘Terra Australis.’
Subsequent voyages took him to parts of the continent still relatively remote today: up the Queensland coast to the furthest reaches of Cape York Peninsula and the islands of the Torres Strait, across the Gulf of Carpentaria to Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory, and around the southern coastline of the continent. On these voyages he was accompanied by the famous Trim, the black-and-white cat who became Matthew’s beloved and loyal companion for many years.
He experienced shipwreck, sickness, injury, thirst and near starvation. None of these deterred his passion for life at sea and for exploration.
Everywhere he ventured he created charts and kept detailed notes of his observations. It’s difficult for us in today’s connected world to understand that to Europeans at that time, ‘Terra Australis’ was largely a mystery – thousands of kilometers of coastline and a vast interior which was – what? Desert? An inland sea? A network of rivers? No Europeans knew.
Another significant feature of Matthew’s experiences was the help given to him and his crews by the indigenous people they encountered. Interactions included warning shots from muskets and some occasions that came close to outright armed conflict; but many times the British mariners had help in the form of fresh water, guidance through difficult country, or exchanges of European goods for food.
Indeed, it is significant that one of the first times the word ‘Australians’ was used, it was to describe First Nations people near what is now called Port Lincoln in South Australia.
And what of Ann, his wife in far-away Lincolnshire?
The couple exchanged letters, full of longing and (on Ann’s part at least) occasional exasperation. The wives of British sea captains had to resign themselves to long periods of separation, though for Ann, this was further prolonged, when on his homeward voyage in 1803, Matthew put in to the French-controlled island of Mauritius for emergency repairs and reprovisioning, only to be placed under guard as a potential British spy. Because news from Europe took so long to reach British colonial outposts, Britain and France were again at war, but Matthew had not known of it.
He was to spend seven long years in captivity of varying degrees of discomfort, before finally being released in 1810.
He and Ann were at last reunited and set up house together, Ann giving birth to a daughter at the relatively old age (for a first-time mother in the 1800s) of nearly forty-one. Matthew’s health, though, was badly affected by his trials at sea. And sadly, he had to battle with the Admiralty to be given the pay owing him while he’d been imprisoned by the French, and for due recognition for his work in mapping Australia.
Matthew Flinders died in 1814 from renal failure following years of kidney and bladder problems. He was only forty years old.
He led an extraordinary life, voyaging through seas and territories previously unknown to Europeans, experiencing many dangers and hardships. He adopted the name Australia for the southern continent he spent so much of his time exploring and he urged the authorities to do likewise.
The aspect of Flinders’ personality that I most admire, though, is that he was a man whose greatest wish was that his work, his charts and discoveries, would be used for the benefit of science and the greater knowledge of humanity in general, not for warfare or domination. In this, of course, he was disappointed, but he lived his life in the service and pursuit of knowledge.
Flinders is a finely researched and well-written account of a fascinating figure of Australian colonial history, the man who – quite literally – put Australia on the map.
Flinders was published by HarperCollins in November 2023.
My thanks to the publishers for a review copy.
Why I am a feminist: ‘Normal Women’ by Philippa Gregory
Where to begin with this huge, sweeping non-fiction book? Perhaps with the title. In an interview I heard with the author (best known for her historical fiction featuring British royalty like the Plantagenet and Tudor women) she said that she wanted to write about the full gamut of women across 900 years of British history – from royal and aristocratic to peasant women. Because, at the times in which they lived, these were ‘normal’ women, doing what queens, noblewomen, tradeswomen and artisans and peasant farming women did.
I found that a compelling argument; more so since reading this grand work of research and narrative.
Why am I interested in the history of British women?
Apart from the fact that I inherited my fascination with history from my mother; as an Australian woman whose ancestors were almost all from England, Ireland or Scotland, the history of Britain and its women is also my history.
Also, my interest in family history is particularly focused on the women in my family tree, the people about whom it is most difficult to find information and records that extend beyond birth and baptism, marriage and babies, death and burial. I want to know what kind of lives they lived, what their likely interests or preoccupations might have been, what big and small events shaped them.
Ms Gregory sums up her motivation for writing the book as follows:
What we read as a history of our nation is a history of men, as viewed by men, as recorded by men.
Normal Women pp1-2
Is 93.1 per cent of history literally ‘His Story’ because women don’t do anything? Are women so busy with their Biology that they have no time for History, like strict timetable choices – you can’t do both?…
Women are there, making fortunes and losing them, breaking the law and enforcing it, defending their castles in siege and setting off on crusade; but they’re often not recorded, or mentioned only in passing by historians, as they were just normal women living normal lives, not worthy of comment.The book begins with the Norman invasion in 1066 and ends at the modern era, in the 1990’s. In between it examines the lives of women over a range of topic areas, including: religion, violence, marriage, women loving women, women and the vote, prostitution, health, education, work, enslaved women and slave owners, single women, ideas about the ‘nature of women’, rape, sport, wealth and poverty, protest…It’s a huge expanse of information drawn from a wide range of sources.
In the process the real reason for the beginnings of the gender pay gap is revealed; also how the patriarchal systems of law and inheritance were imported and formalised by the Norman invaders; how accusations of rape were dealt with in the legal system and how this barely changed over centuries; when businesswomen and tradeswomen gained admission to important guilds and how they were later excluded; how a queen became the first woman to publish a book in English in her own name; how women worked together and also against each other; a sombre roll call of women martyrs who died for their religious beliefs during the early modern period and another of women murdered by husband, boyfriend or family member in 2019.
The author’s skill is evident in the way she has presented a mind-boggling array of historical facts and themes in a compelling narrative, with snippets of the names and stories of women across different circumstances that help to bring them to life for the reader.
And there are some Oh My God moments. Here are some that stayed with me:
- Sixteen year old Emma de Gauder holding out against William I (aka the Conqueror) at a Norwich castle for three months and later going on the First Crusade with her husband.
- Roman Catholic churches in the eight century hosting same-sex marriages (women marrying women) which were entered in the parish records in the usual way.
- The old Anglo-Saxon word for ‘wife’ meant peace-weavers and ‘spinster’ originally meant the actual occupation (a woman who spun yarn.)
- The 1624 Infanticide Act meant that women who could not prove that a baby had been stillborn would hang. There was no assumption of innocence and no accusation levelled at the father of the baby.
- The sentence of death by burning at the stake was still being applied for crimes such as the murder of a husband in the 1700’s. It mattered not how violent, cruel or abusive the husband was. Husband-killing was seen as ‘petty treason’.
- Forceps for difficulties in childbirth were invented in the 1700’s but kept a secret for three generations in order to increase the profits of the medical family concerned.
- Housewives living in poverty were blamed for poor sanitation and high rates of disease and child mortality.
- Syphilis was thought to occur spontaneously in the bodies of promiscuous women (read: prostitutes) and passed on to men.
- Rape in marriage was thought to be impossible as their wedding vows meant that women gave consent to sexual acts from that time on.
- The widespread belief (even into the early twentieth century) that women would become infertile if they were more highly educated: to quote from the book, a statement by a neurologist – If the feminine abilities were developed to the same degree as those of the make, her material organs would suffer, and we should have before us a repulsive and useless hybrid. (p460)
- Male students at Oxford University were so appalled at the proposal that female graduates should be awarded their degrees on completion of their course of study – in 1948 – that they attacked the college residence of women students.
- and so on and so on…
I dare any woman to read this book and not be thankful for feminism and the changes it has helped to bring about. But – it also highlights the fact that there is a long, long way to go before we can truly say we have achieved genuine equality for women of all classes, races, religious beliefs and family situations.
Normal Women is published by HarperCollins in November 2023.
My thanks to the publishers for a copy.
