It’s complicated: ‘Germania’ by Simon Winder
This is not a new book: first published in 2010 and one of a trilogy of books about Central Europe, Germania is described as a personal history of Germans ancient and modern.
Why did I pick up a fourteen-year-old book about Germany?
Because, in my investigations into my family tree, there is one individual about whom I know very little: my mother’s 3 x great-grandfather, Christian Uebel.
In a tree made up of mainly English and Irish branches, Christian Uebel is an outlier, on a branch of his own. He emigrated from the Rhineland region of the country we now know as Germany, arriving in Australia in the 1860s. I realised that I knew so much more about British history and culture and almost nothing about Germany, so Germania was my first step to correcting this.
I quickly realised that the history of central Europe is much more complicated than I had imagined. I knew that the German nation did not exist until the unification in 1871, and in the centuries leading up to that, there were endless squabbles between and about the many, many small and large states that made up the German-speaking parts of Europe.
Germania traverses the history of this region from the days of the ancient tribes in the forests, all the way up to 1933, when the Nazis took power. I wondered about this timeframe until I realised it was for an entirely sensible reason. The dark shadows of WWII have so dominated German history, that apart from the first World War, many people know very little about what came before it.
This is not simply a book about history, although of course that is an important theme. It’s also a travelogue of a particular kind; one where the author indulges his pet loves – and hates – about a country and culture, and describes these in a very amusing – even humorously disrespectful – way.
Here’s an example: in discussing the appearance of a particular abbey, which gives a sense of an ancient and brilliant culture, but whose main interior unfortunately looks as though something has gone horribly wrong involving a collision with several trucks filled with icing sugar, having had an extreme rococo makeover to mark its seven-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary. (p65)
There are plenty of gems like this, along with more serious discussions of the ups and downs of German history. On this, we are told that there were three points at which it was the worst time to be alive in central Europe’s past: the 1340s (famine and plague), the 1630s (the Thirty Years War) and the 1940s.
No prizes for guessing why that last one is on the list.
I was grateful for the map of Germany and its neighbours in central Europe at the front of the book, flipping frequently back and forth in my quest to learn more about this fascinating and (to me anyway) somewhat bewildering region.
Winder’s analysis of the themes and movements, great and small, of European history is thoughtful and thought-provoking:
But, as with so many aspects of Central European history, there is such an amazing spread of unintended consequences that only a form of political paralysis can substitute for the actual kaleidoscope of decisions which generate the oddness of European history – a small, bitter and crowded landscape somehow incapable of (indeed allergic to) the broad-ranging uniformity of the Chinese Empire or the United States. It is unfortunate that what seems in many lights so fascinating about Europe should also, as a spin-off, be the basis for so much rage and death.
Germania p273
Germania was published by Picador in 2010.
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.
For all cat lovers: ‘Mickey’ by Helen Brown
When I received this book to review, I wasn’t sure if it was a good fit. After all, I’m not what you’d call a cat person. I don’t dislike cats, but I don’t always gravitate towards them as true ‘cat people’ do. (A certain Queensland based fluffy Birman gentleman cat might be the exception here.)
I needn’t have worried. Mickey is certainly about a cat – a stray tiger-striped kitten with extra toes who entered the author’s life in 1960’s New Zealand – but as the book’s subtitle suggests, it’s much more than a ‘cat story.’
Mickey becomes The cat who helped me through times of change by being a silent yet steadfast companion through the author’s early teen years, in an era of enormous personal, family, and social and political changes.
The author has woven the story of her relationship with Mickey, into the broader fabric of her rather eccentric family life, the idiosyncrasies of her neighbourhood and small town community, and her growing awareness of the wider world around her.
As a child of the 1960’s in a small rural community, I resonated with some of the descriptions in the book. Helen’s mum, for example, sewing and knitting garments for her family, as a cost saving measure but also a way to show her love for them. The agony of embarrassment at being fitted for a first bra. The sense of loss as older sibling grow up or move away. The ‘hollow art of waiting’ in a world in which it was impossible to communicate with each other at the tap of a screen. The unease generated by living in the nuclear age, thinly veiled but still apparent amongst adults. And of course, a war being fought somewhere in the world, reflected on TV screens and in the papers – in this case, the war in Vietnam which took away New Zealander and Australian young men at the very beginning of their adult lives.
The author describes these and more, with the most memorable scenes being those featuring her unconventional family: her father’s visions for the future development of natural gas as an energy source, her mother’s obsession with the local musical theatre productions, her older brother’s fascination with taxidermy. They are characters drawn beautifully and with great affection.
But of course Mickey the cat is the star of the book, and here the author’s deep love for and intuitive understanding of cats shines:
Felines don’t give a hiss about the materialistic obsessions that make people miserable. They live in the gaps, observing energies between themselves and other beings, offering affection when it suits them… A feline is never fully tamed. Maintaining its connection to the wild, it refuses to be bossed around or trained to sit like a dog. The cat is seldom open to bribery. When it offers trust, the gift is more precious than the first camellia of spring.
Mickey p91I am pretty certain that cat lovers will adore this book. But even cat-neutral people, like me, will enjoy its gentle telling of a coming-of-age story and its depictions of a world that is, in many essential ways, no longer with us.
Mickey is published by HarperCollins Publishers Australia in May 2024.
My thanks to the publishers 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.
As I sit down to write this review, it is leading up to ANZAC Day in Australia, an annual day of commemoration of those who served in military campaigns in Australia’s name. Up until recently, those who served as medical staff and nurses in wartime seem to have been ‘add-ons’ in our military histories.
Take the story of Sister Vivian Bullwinkle. Her name should come easily to Australians thinking about their nation’s involvement in war, like Simpson and his donkey in the ANZAC story, or ‘Weary’ Dunlop in WWII.
There is now a statue of Sister Vivian in the grounds of the Australian National War Memorial. But when it was unveiled in 2023 – last year! – it was the first statue of a woman at the memorial.
I’ll move on from my bewilderment at why it took such a long time to recognise this woman, and onto Grantlee Kieza’s story of her life. What a tale it is.
Vivian Bullwinkle completed her nursing and midwifery training at Broken Hill Hospital in the 1930s. Then came the announcement in September 1939 that Australia was at war with Germany. From the Melbourne hospital where she was working, Viv enlisted as an army nurse. By 1941 she was on her way to Singapore, where she would face the new enemy of the war, Japan.
The book includes vivid descriptions of the rapid and vicious attacks on Malaya and Singapore by Japanese troops. On reading these pages I had a sense of the fear that must have been in every heart, knowing that the Japanese were moving south at a rapid rate, killing anyone who stood in their way. I also felt anger at the apparent lack of preparation on the part of Allied authorities; the complacent belief of Western superiority which was then prevalent, certainly worked in favour of the Japanese. Rumours began spreading about the merciless nature of the Japanese soldiers.
On a personal note, an uncle of mine was involved in that first encounter with the Japanese on Singapore Island; he was reported missing, presumed dead; a fate confirmed by the Australian Army at the war’s end. His mother and siblings never got over the loss of smiling, kind, lovable Ernest Harvey Newton, known as ‘Snow’ to his family. Learning about the cruelty inflicted on those who survived encounters with the Japanese, perhaps Snow’s fate was preferable. Who can say? All I know is that the whole thing was an shocking savagery that should never have happened.
Eventually the nurses were evacuated from Singapore; it is telling that they apparently felt great reluctance and shame to be leaving the sick and wounded soldiers they’d been caring for. The author paints an appalling picture of the chaos and desperation of a defeated Singapore. The nauseating smell of death and raw sewage, oil fires and explosions, terrified civilians climbing over each other in their panic.
Worse was to come for Sister Vivian and her comrades. Put aboard the Vyner Brooke, formerly a royal yacht of Sarawak, over two hundred people endured a terrifying voyage from Singapore heading for the relative safety of the Indonesian islands not yet occupied by Japanese. The stories of those on board are poignant: sixty-five Australian nursing sisters, including one who was seven months’ pregnant; a family of Polish Jews who had fled to the assumed safety of Singapore only to find themselves refugees once again; and many women and children.
The ship was bombed by Japanese aircraft and went down off the coast of Bangka Island near Sumatra. Viv and her nursing colleagues tried to assist the wounded and terrified civilians, before the inevitable order to abandon ship as it broke up underneath them.
But Viv had never learnt to swim.
Somehow, she survived, with the aid of a life jacket and an upturned lifeboat, despite continued bombing from above and the threat of sharks below. She stumbled onto a beach where she recovered enough to find other survivors washed up on the island by the strong currents. At least twelve nurses had died in the water that night. With no food, shelter, and with many needing urgent medical care, the survivors agreed that they had to surrender to the Japanese and hope that the rumours they’d heard about the Japanese taking no prisoners were not true.
What follows is a story of unbelievable cruelty, even sadism, by some of the Japanese they encounter. Men and women alike were coldly gunned down or bayoneted on Radji Beach, left to bleed out in the shallow water or drift off on the tide. Twenty-one of Viv’s nursing companions were murdered that day.
Amazingly, after being hit through her middle by a machine gun and left in the water, Viv did not die. Some instinct told her not to show that she was alive, and even though she couldn’t swim, she allowed herself to float until the men with guns were satisfied that they had killed everyone. Eventually she was taken to a prison camp where she was reunited with others of her nursing sister colleagues.
Moved from camp to camp, starved, with no medical care, minimal fresh water, no way to preserve their hygiene and health, beaten and abused…this was the experience of nurses and civilian refugees on Bangka Island and Sumatra for three and a half years. They survived by caring for each other, pooling any resources they could scrounge, making efforts to raise the spirits of their companions, burying the dead as one by one, women began to succumb to the ravages of malnutrition, tropical diseases and mistreatment by their captors.
It’s a terrible story of unimaginable hardship and suffering. As I read, I often wondered ‘What would I do in this situation? Could I endure it? Would I have survived?’
It’s also about stoicism, bravery, sacrifice and the comradeship that we often hear about amongst soldiers, but is less often applied to those who care for the sick and wounded.
Of course the war did end, Japan surrendered, and the prisoners were eventually found and returned to Australia. We should remember that in the midst of their suffering, none of the nurses knew what would happen. They had no way of knowing what the eventual outcome of the war – and their fates – would be.
After the war, Viv’s strength of spirit, her compassion and her pride in the nursing profession, did not abate. She devoted the rest of her working life to improving the standing and professionalism of nursing in Australia, as well as speaking at many memorials and events where she kept the memory of her dead sisters alive.
And in 1975, aged nearly sixty, she played an instrumental role as one of twelve nursing volunteers in Operation Babylift, the mass evacuation of orphaned babies and children from South Vietnam, aboard a chartered Qantas jet from then Saigon to Sydney.
I was so happy to learn that just a year or so later, she married and was able to enjoy more than twenty years with husband Frank Statham.
Sister Viv is a gripping account of a woman who endured great suffering but went on to live a full and productive life in spite of her awful wartime experiences. Grantlee Kieza has written a biography worthy of this truly remarkable Australian.
Sister Viv is published by HarperCollins in April 2024.
My thanks to the publishers 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.
‘Question 7’ by Richard Flanagan
As I began to think about describing this book, I struggled to come up with a name for its form. Is it memoir? Non-fiction? Narrative non-fiction? Something else entirely…or all of the above?
The publisher, Penguin Books Australia, offered this:
At once a love song to his island home and to his parents, this hypnotic melding of dream, history, place and memory is about how our lives so often arise out of the stories of others and the stories we invent about ourselves.
Penguin Random HouseReaders of two of Flanagan’s earlier works, Death of a River Guide (1994) and The Narrow Road to the Deep North (2013) will recognise two occurrences referred to in this, his latest work. One is his near-drowning when he was a river guide on Tasmania’s wild Franklin River. The other is his father’s ordeal as a Japanese prisoner of war, first on the Burma ‘Death Railway’ and later, as a slave worker in a Japanese coal mine.
These traumatic experiences are woven together with reflections on his own childhood in rural Tasmania in the 1960s and 70s, his family (especially his parents), Tasmania’s beginnings as a far-flung outpost of the British Empire and the resulting attempt to exterminate the island’s First Peoples, and the historic seeds of the process of scientific conjecture, discovery and work that culminated in the explosion of the first atomic bombs over Japan, which finally brought World War II to an end.
On this last point, there is quite a lot made of the romance between the famous (and married) author HG Wells with another writer, Rebecca West in the early 1900’s, as Flanagan follows the normally unseen path that led from an affair between writers to the spark of an idea that resulted in the atom bomb.
Unlikely? No more so than any other ‘coincidences’ of life. This author’s genius allows his readers to follow a wandering pathway between events, people and places, and see them as he does. As a reader, I had to trust that this was a writer who knew what he was doing, who could guide me along a seemingly disconnected series of events and thoughts and bring me through to the other side. In the end it all made perfect sense, even within the context of the chaos and ultimate meaninglessness of so much of the world.
The result is like an artwork: a tightly bound, circular structure in which each apparently disparate element affects and shapes all the others.
And the title?
It comes from a quote by Anton Checkov in which he is sending up the kind of school mathematics problems I always loathed:
Wednesday, June 17, 1881, a train had to leave station A at 3am in order to reach station B at 11pm; just as the train was about to depart, however, an order came that the train had to reach station B by 7pm. Who loves longer, a man or a woman?
Question 7, loc 9%There are almost unbearably poignant moments, especially those concerning his parents; sadness for the lost world of his childhood; anger at certain cynical aspects of the publishing world, deep respect for the written word combined with a wry understanding that the words of a book are never the book, the soul of it is everything. (loc 58%)
There are so many snippets of prose that are beautiful or brilliant, too many to make choosing a quote an easy task. Here is just one:
My mother and father had a similar gift, of stitching together torn fragments into some harmony amidst the melee of daily life. My mother and my father in their stories and jokes, in their generosity and kindness to others, asserted the necessary illusion their lives might mean something in the endless tumult of this meaningless universe. For them to live, love had to exist, the love they valued above all other things; they lived that love and they fought for that love and defended that love. With the passing of time this illusion became their hard-won truth. It was a form of magic and they were magicians. In my vanity, I had always thought of them as naive. Only now writing these words do I finally see the naivete was all mine.
Question 7 (ebook version) loc. 67%Question 7 was published by Penguin Random House in October 2023.
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.
2024 Challenges
Once again I am signing up to reading challenges for the coming year, as a way to add to my reading diet and explore new areas of knowledge and understanding.
In 2024, I will take part in these challenges:
- Non Fiction Reading Challenge
My goal is to become a ‘Non Fiction Nibbler’, reading 6 books from any 6 of the 12 categories (details about the challenge, hosted by Book’d Out, here) - Historical Fiction Reading Challenge
Of course! I’m aiming for the ‘Mediaeval’ level of 15 books.
This one is hosted by the Intrepid Reader. Sign up and find out more here. - Books by First Nations authors
This one is my own personal challenge, not an official one. I’m aiming for 6 books by Australian (or other) First Nations authors. - Cloak and Dagger Reading Challenge
Hosted by Carol’s Notebook (check out the blog here)
This is a new one for me; I’m having a go for fun, as I do enjoy a good crime/mystery read.
The challenge also includes thriller/suspense/true crime books.
I’m aiming to become an ‘Amateur Sleuth’ by reading between 5 – 15 books in these genres.
So, that’s my reading sorted. Oh, and add the book group choices already programmed for the year, plus ones I review for publishers…I’ll be behind a book somewhere if you need me.
Have you joined a reading challenge or reading group, and if so, did it help you to expand your reading repertoire?
- Non Fiction Reading Challenge
