What stories tell us: ‘Finding Eliza’ by Larissa Behrendt
Euahleyai / Gamillaroi author, filmmaker, lawyer and academic, Larissa Behrendt writes both non-fiction and fiction which illuminate aspects of Australia’s history from an indigenous perspective. Her writing is always thought-provoking and perceptive, and Finding Eliza is no exception.
The book takes as its starting point the power of stories to teach, explain, and create beliefs and attitudes. She takes the well-known historical event of the 1836 shipwreck of the Sterling Castle on an island off Australia’s east coast. The only woman among a handful of survivors, Eliza was kept alive by the Butchulla people of the island called K’gari (later named by the English after the ship’s captain – and Eliza’s husband – Fraser Island). She spent several weeks there, separated from other white people, after witnessing -according to her account – her husband’s death after being speared by a Butchulla man.
This story has been told and retold many times since then, including by Eliza herself after her rescue and return to England. There have been so many versions that it is difficult to know what parts are based on real events and what has been changed, embroidered or created.
The author’s focus, however, is how the stories that grew up around Eliza’s experiences, illustrate the themes and motivations of those telling them. There are elements needed for a story to work, both for those telling and hearing the story. Eliza had to be ‘good’ and the Aboriginal people ‘bad.’ She must conform to the Victorian-era stereotype of the virtuous, middle-class, loyal wife. It was commonly believed by Europeans at the time that the Australian ‘natives’ were savage, unpredictable, and prone to cannabalism – therefore, to be feared and seen as inferior.
So it is not surprising that Eliza and the Butchulla were represented accordingly in the tales that grew up around her experiences.
The Butchulla people had their own world view and beliefs. They were not just a silent backdrop to the adventures of a white woman, nor were they an undifferentiated source of threat. But in order to provide the tension necessary in Eliza’s story, they had to be portrayed in this way. The truth is that without their assistance and care, Eliza would have most likely perished on the island before she could be rescued.
…{Eliza’s} survival of the shipwreck is not the climax of this story; it is just the beginning. The heart of her story unfolds when she makes contact with the Aboriginal people who populate this land, and it is her alleged captivity by these ‘brutal’ and ‘cannabalistic savages’ and her eventual rescue that gives her tale its compelling drama.
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The author takes this a starting point, to then explore a range of aspects of colonialism in Australia.
These include: the ‘Enlightenment’ ideals of the nineteenth century viewed alongside the dispossession and savagery of occupation and colonisation; black / white relations including sexual relations, sexual slavery and prostitution; the silence about the contribution of Aboriginal women to the colonial economy; the control over Aboriginal lives wielded by the colonists; why the trope of cannabilism held such power among whites; cultural appropriation, and how positive stereotypes can be as damaging as negative ones.
As Ms Behrendt concludes:
In… stories, we learn much more about the coloniser than we ever learn about the colonised, but by looking at them through different lenses and different perspectives we begin to appreciate the complexities and nuances of our own history.
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This is a book that made me think, review my own preconceptions about the past and the stories I grew up with. It is as relevant today as when it was first published by University of Qld Press, in 2016.
‘Women & Children’ by Tony Birch
Australian First nations author Tony Birch’s 2023 novel Women & Children was shortlisted for the 2024 Australian Book Industry Awards – Literary Fiction Book of the Year.
Set in the mid 1960’s it concerns a young boy, Joe Cluny, whose main preoccupation is his tendency to court trouble with the nuns at his Catholic school. He lives in a working class suburb with his single mum and older sister. They are a tight-knit family with the usual money problems and squabbles of families in his neighbourhood.
When his mum’s sister Oona appears at their door, Joe’s world view has to adjust to a new reality – that of violence perpetrated on women by the men in their lives, and the way doors slam when they seek help.
Joe comes to understand that there are many types of men, including Oona’s violent boyfriend and his own, mostly absent, father. There is the priest who won’t help Oona. But there is also his grandfather Charlie, and Charlie’s friend Ranji, both of whom offer a kind of companionable time-out from the troubles and mysteries of the adult world.
As Joe tries to understand the complexities of his society and the way that secrets can damage, he has to leave part of his childhood behind.
This reads like a very personal sort of novel, which the author acknowledges in his note at the end:
Women & Children is a work of fiction. It is not the story of my own family, but a story motivated by our family’s refusal to accept silence as an option in our lives.
Women & Children loc 208 of 210 (eBook)One of the novel’s strengths is its spare use of language and the way it conjures young Joe’s world, largely seen through his eyes.
Another is the bond and strength of the female characters: Joe’s mum Marion, Oona, and his sister Ruby, all demonstrate a particular quality of spirit, hints that they will survive, perhaps even thrive, despite the obstacles lined up against them.
Children who have the kinds of troubling experiences that Joe has had, need allies. Charlie and Ranji are good examples of how adults can provide alternative experiences so crucial for kids to understand that violence does not have to be part of relationships.
This novel tells a simple story that is both very old and completely current. I wish it didn’t feel so timely, but it deals with a theme that, sadly, seems to be ever present. Uncovering the silences and secrets around violence and what it does to people is an essential step to stopping it.
Women & Children was published by UQP in 2023.
Tale of two cities: ‘Edenglassie’ by Melissa Lucashenko
It felt quite appropriate that I was finishing this new book by Goorie author Melissa Lucashenko just as the annual public holiday of ‘Australia Day’ (also known as Invasion Day or Survival Day) dawned.
Given that the day is supposedly Australia’s national day, but is held on January 26th, the day that Governor Phillip planted the British flag on a Sydney beach and claimed the place for the British, it raises many questions of the kind also found within this novel.
When does colonisation of a place end – if it ever does?
Has the modern nation of Australia moved beyond its undeniably racist beginnings?
Who has the right to tell whose stories?
Can we see vestiges of the past in our current cities and landscapes? What lies beneath the concrete and tall buildings?
Can past hurts ever be healed?Edenglassie was a name used briefly in the early years of colonisation for part of what is now the city of Brisbane. The novel has two timelines: a current day one, and a second narrative taking place in 1855, just a few decades after the first British convicts, guards and settlers established a settlement there.
Mulanyin is a kippa, a young Yugambeh man from the coastal region around Nerang, who has been living at Edenglassie, gone through ceremony there, fallen for a young woman, Nita, and plans to marry her, save enough money to buy a boat and return to his saltwater home. He’s received good advice from his elders, especially his Big Father, who warns him: Think hard before you pick up the things of the dagai, especially those that seem entirely pleasurable.
He is hot headed and must learn to control his impulses, especially when he sees wrongdoing against his fellows or himself. He comes to learn that while the Law imposes bonds and obligations that chafe, it also binds all Goorie people together and protects them and their civilisation. There is a lot of information given here about some of the precepts of Aboriginal culture: the importance and purpose of ceremony, the intricate rules of kinship and marriage, the careful tending and protection of natural resources.
It is effortlessly woven in with Mulanyin’s story, as is the language scattered liberally throughout. We learn that jarjums are children, jalgany is an Aboriginal woman, pullen pullen is a space set aside for ceremonial combat. There is no glossary – we get the meaning from context and repetition throughout the novel; the best way to learn.
The mid-nineteenth century was a time of increased tension and conflict in areas of Australia where European settlers were pushing further, taking more land, squeezing the First peoples out of home and livelihood. Inevitably Mulanyin is caught up in some of this with tragic consequences for his people.
His story carries through, indirectly to begin with, into the modern-day narrative. This is actually where the novel opens, in 2024, with an elderly woman known as ‘Granny Eddie Blanket’ suffering a fall in the city that sees her in hospital for most of the rest of the novel.
Granny Eddie is a formidable woman in her nineties, with a granddaughter, Winona, who is a strong activist. A young doctor, Johnny, provides care while exploring with Winona his own search for his indigenous ancestors. While a white journalist plies Granny Eddie with questions, hoping for a story on ‘Queensland’s Oldest Aboriginal Woman.’
Through sometimes heated discussion we hear debate on issues like cultural appropriation, ‘wannabe blackfellas’, government hypocrisy, does DNA make you Aboriginal? contemporary blak activism… This part of the narrative is both hard-hitting and frequently very funny, often at the same time.
Granny Eddie chastises Winona for her scorn at Dr Johnny’s attempts to get closer to indigenous ancestry:
‘I can’t come at it, Gran,’ she finally muttered. ‘It just feels all wrong. Invasive.’
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“Yeah, I know it does,’ Granny nodded. ‘But believe me, girl. You’re thinking like a whitefella when ya close him out. That’s not our way. We bring people in, we bring our Mob home, and we care about em. We teach em how to behave proper way. So, you just knock orf and be nice to him!’
But what if they’re the same mob that stole our Home in the first place, Winona burned to retort. What if they’re white, Nan.
But instead, she sat down and shut her gob and stayed ning, just like a real Goorie must do when growled by her Elder.Last year I hear Melissa Lucashenko interviewed in which she described how it is for an Aboriginal person walking around modern Australia, aware of all the history under their feet; the ancestors’ birthplaces and burial sites, the places that once nurtured whole communities and were nurtured in return. Edenglassie is a novel that helps white Australians catch a glimpse of what was there before the dispossession and the violence and theft that came with invasion and colonisation.
And, we can get a tiny glimpse into the way that ancestors’ stories and teachings are carried though into modern day lives.
Edenglassie was published by UQP in October 2023.
Friendships and memory: ‘True Friends’ by Patti Miller
Upon opening Australian author Patti Miller’s latest book, I immediately began thinking about my own friends, past and present. I have been fortunate to have experienced sustained, deep, nurturing friendships throughout my life, but of course there have been some that have fallen away as the years went on – mostly gradually through changed life circumstances, but one or two abruptly and somewhat painfully.
True Friends is an exploration of friendship but also of memory: when considering the people and events in our past, what Patti Miller calls the ‘questionable vault of memory’ will inevitably get things wrong, or in a muddled order. Tightly linked with memories are sounds, smells, tastes, places, feelings; even if we get some facts wrong, these things bind the event or moment to the memory and help to bring it alive once again.
First there is the original experience, but even at that stage, before interpretation or memory, so much is unobserved, unrecorded. A few moments of colour and sound are partially registered and then all that is left are the neurotransmitters floating from axon to dendrite, hopefully creating a neural pathway. The lovely, faulty, biochemical science of friendship.
True Friends p167She describes the epic poem Gilgamesh, written on clay tablets up to two thousand years before Homer’s Iliad or Odyssey were written, as the first story – and it is, essentially, all about friendship. The need for connection, contact and understanding with another is a fundamental trait from the deep past of humanity right through to modern times. Thinking about this, I wondered why there have not been many more non-fiction books on the topic of friends.
This book is about friendships generally, and the author’s friendships specifically, but it is told through the framing device of one friendship in particular which did not last, and which ended in a way that left her feeling bewildered and hurt. She describes the period of time during which she struggled to recognise the end of the relationship as ‘the long bewilderment.’
I’m certain that many reading this book will recognise the pain of this.
Overall, though, the book is a hymn to friends and the richness they add to our lives, in all their complexities and challenges:
For me, loving friendship is not a fusion with another, but it is a rickety swing bridge to a separate being, and even though I know it can fall away in to the abyss, the urge to step onto it is always there…when I am with a friend, I am woven into the human mystery.
True Friends p279I have enjoyed every book by Patti Miller that I have read, and this one is no exception. It is a book to savour, one that made me laugh and sigh in recognition, and that I continued to think about long after I’d closed the cover.
True Friends is published by University of Queensland Press in 2022.
My thanks to the publishers for a review copy.
