‘The Sun Walks Down’ by Fiona McFarlane

Absolutely love this book! Although I am not a clever reader of literary fiction, Fiona McFarlane got me hooked. It is sometimes a demanding read but so alive and full of richly portrayed characters.

Of course, the South Australian landscape is the main protagonist, tortured and decimated as it is, ruined by European settlers who did not see beauty or learn bush secrets nor had the ability to properly sustain the land; they just saw desert to be conquered. And they did it badly.

September 1883, in the South Australian outback, young Denny is lost in a dust storm but author McFarlane’s tale spins off into other areas as well; the climate, people showing strength and fear, love, intimacy, unthinking cruelty, making good and bad decisions, and those who trek back and forth across the bone-dry landscape on enduring camels. Colonial Australia was raw and rough; every human emotion is detailed here, channelled into finding a lost boy, coercing the reader into moods of discomfort, dreamlike imaginings, and showing the struggles needed to sustain a viable future.

Although I dislike the non-indigenous trees on the bookcover, I could write copious notes on each character in this story. McFarlane brings to mind earlier Australian authors, superlative Patrick White and inimitable Thea Astley. Here, McFarlane’s character of Mrs Joanna Axam reminds me of my great-aunt, a strong and opinionated woman with natural cunning subdued for polite society and an unerring ability to read people’s personalities, often using it against them.
GBW 2023

Joanna Axam has a whippet named Bolingbroke which shows her sense of humour. Henry, her deceased husband, left behind a biblical garden, not because he was devout but because he liked the idea. Joanna knows it’s thirsty, a waste of water, but cannot let it die even though their land is barren due to cattle over-farming. I found her chapters quite riveting and she is obsessed with the possum cloak worn by Jimmy, one of Sergeant Foster’s trackers. What a schemer! Did she want it taken from the rightful owner to cover her own disfigurement? Did she understand mob and Country significance of a possum cloak?

Although young frightened Denny is the catalyst, over seven long days, there are many people good, bad and indifferent, trying to find the youngster by using their own particular skills. Two people spring to mind, Karl and Bess, penniless itinerant artists wandering in the desert in search of creative inspiration. They are woven through Denny’s story for better or worse, you decide.
GBW 2023

I read this book when I was feeling strong otherwise I may have been overwhelmed by emotion at what Fiona McFarlane has created. As indicated by my first name, I am a descendant of German settlers to South Australia where the story is set. My great-great grandfather was a Lutheran pastor who documented the sad decline of Indigenous populations, caring for them as best he could. His records are in University archives and that’s all I know.

Just like life ‘The Sun Walks Down’ has turmoil then a resolution of sorts.

Set aside a chunk of quiet time to read it.

♥ Gretchen Bernet-Ward

My Goodreads reviews—
https://www.goodreads.com/gretchenbernetward

Review ‘The Animals in That Country’ Laura Jean McKay

Australian native animals **not** include with book © Gretchen Bernet-Ward 2021

My reading was floundering until this gleaming gem came along! ‘The Animals in That Country’ is a novel with strange overtones and intense undercurrents. Certainly a distinctive story with fear, confusion and confronting chapters involving the catastrophic side effects of human zooflu virus and the subsequent fallout for the animal world.

Kind of dystopian, kind of quirky,
this book made me think, it made me cringe,
it fascinated me, it troubled me,
and it will stay in my mind for a long time.

People succumb as the virus spreads across the country, or they try to outrun it, and some eventually arrive at the animal park where alcoholic ranger Jean Bennett works. Her initial despair permeates these early chapters, both for the animals and her wayward son who causes problems. Jean is careworn by events and decides to leave the native animal sanctuary with Dingo Sue to find her runaway family.

I may not like the disarray Jean and Dingo Sue get into as the pandemic spreads but it certainly makes riveting reading. I trekked with them along dusty outback roads via devastated townships to reach the ocean. They meet rough characters and conmen but Jean believes in Sue’s unerring instincts leading them towards the hypnotic seashore.

With a singular writing style, author Laura Jean McKay tackles a pandemic from a different angle. The animals and birds are not anthropomorphised in the usual sense, and definitely not suitable for children. At first Dingo Sue is unintelligible until gradually Jean understands the patterns of mind matching physical dialogue, and ‘speech’ is cleverly enhanced by page layouts.

The subtle yet resilient nurturing instincts of both human and animal infuses the story and this primitive and powerful connection twisted my brain. I was gripped by the overwhelmed and distraught characters who learned that we are part of nature, dependent upon it for our existence and survival but it can drive us mad.

As I was nearing the final chapters, I heard that author McKay had won the coveted Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards 2021. In a statement McKay said she had been writing a draft several years before coronavirus devastated the real world. Apparently she was unwell with malaria-like symptoms while writing and said this may have accounted for the creeping darkness of the story, the uncertainty and panic is eerily similar.

This novel cries out for an Australian native animal bookcover ‘The clouds have parted, leaving the lit-up ghost of a dingo, a pale and vengeful ancestor on the passenger seat beside me … Her hair shifts. Body ripples with messages that join like drops of water in the sea.’
Thoughts on ‘The Animals in That Country’

An earthy, supernatural tale, a reminder of Earl Nightingale’s quote ‘Never compete. Create’ and Laura Jean McKay has excelled.

I can highly recommend the audio book read by the author, it boosts the story to yet another level.

♥ Gretchen Bernet-Ward

PROFILE
Laura Jean McKay is the author of ‘The Animals in That Country’ (Scribe 2020) and ‘Holiday in Cambodia’ (Black Inc. 2013) shortlisted for three national book awards in Australia. Dr McKay is a lecturer in creative writing at Massey University NZ, with a PhD from University of Melbourne focusing on literary animal studies.
LINKS
Laura Jean McKay’s bio journal
http://laurajeanmckay.com/
McKay is the ‘animal expert’ presenter on ABC Listen’s ‘Animal Sound Safari’.
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/animal-sound-safari/
FURTHER READING
Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards 2021
https://www.wheelercentre.com/projects/victorian-premier-s-literary-awards-2021
Scribe Publications information
https://scribepublications.com.au/books-authors/books/the-animals-in-that-country
The Dingos of Fraser Island Queensland
https://parks.des.qld.gov.au/parks/kgari-fraser/about/fraser-island-dingoes/dingo-ecology

‘September in Australia’ Poem by Henry Kendall

‘September in Australia’ by Henry Kendall

Grey Winter hath gone, like a wearisome guest,
And, behold, for repayment,
September comes in with the wind of the West
And the Spring in her raiment!
The ways of the frost have been filled of the flowers,
While the forest discovers
Wild wings, with the halo of hyaline hours,
And the music of lovers.

September, the maid with the swift, silver feet!
She glides, and she graces
The valleys of coolness, the slopes of the heat,
With her blossomy traces;
Sweet month, with a mouth that is made of a rose,
She lightens and lingers
In spots where the harp of the evening glows,
Attuned by her fingers.

The stream from its home in the hollow hill slips
In a darling old fashion;
And the day goeth down with a song on its lips,
Whose key-note is passion.
Far out in the fierce, bitter front of the sea
I stand, and remember
Dead things that were brothers and sisters of thee,
Resplendent September.

The West, when it blows at the fall of the noon
And beats on the beaches,
Is filled with a tender and tremulous tune
That touches and teaches;
The stories of Youth, of the burden of Time,
And the death of Devotion,
Come back with the wind, and are themes of the rhyme
In the waves of the ocean.

We, having a secret to others unknown,
In the cool mountain-mosses,
May whisper together, September, alone
Of our loves and our losses.
One word for her beauty, and one for the grace
She gave to the hours;
And then we may kiss her, and suffer her face
To sleep with the flowers.

High places that knew of the gold and the white
On the forehead of Morning
Now darken and quake, and the steps of the
Night Are heavy with warning!
Her voice in the distance is lofty and loud
Through the echoing gorges;
She hath hidden her eyes in a mantle of cloud,
And her feet in the surges!

On the tops of the hills, on the turreted cones –
Chief temples of thunder –
The gale, like a ghost, in the middle watch moans,
Gliding over and under.
The sea, flying white through the rack and the rain,
Leapeth wild at the forelands;
And the plover, whose cry is like passion with pain,
Complains in the moorlands.

Oh, season of changes – of shadow and shine –
September the splendid!
My song hath no music to mingle with thine,
And its burden is ended;
But thou, being born of the winds and the sun,
By mountain, by river,
Mayst lighten and listen, and loiter and run,
With thy voices for ever.

Henry Kendall (1839 – 1882)

‘Leaves from Australian Forests’
Poems of Henry Kendall – with Prefatory Sonnets.
Third poem – Page 7 of original book.
Pages 163 – with Dedication.
Published 1869 by George Robertson, Melbourne, Australia.
Printed by Walker, May & Co, Melbourne, Australia.

Poet Henry Kendall – painting ‘Bush Burial’ by Frederick McCubbin (1890)

Website https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Leaves_from_Australian_Forests.html?id=D5UuAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

♥ Gretchen Bernet-Ward

‘Going to School’ Poem by C J Dennis

IMG_20180803_091129 — Published by Random House Australia, November 2011 https://www.penguin.com.au/books/classic-australian-poems-9781742753621

Going to School

C J Dennis

Did you see them pass today, Billy, Kate and Robin,
All astride upon the back of old grey Dobbin?
Jigging, jogging off to school, down the dusty track––
What must Dobbin think of it––three upon his back?
Robin at the bridle-rein, in the middle Kate,
Billy holding on behind, his legs out straight.

Now they’re coming back from school, jig, jog, jig.
See them at the corner where the gums grow big;
Dobbin flicking off the flies and blinking at the sun––
Having three upon his back he thinks is splendid fun:
Robin at the bridle-rein, in the middle Kate,
Little Billy up behind, his legs out straight.

Poem originally published in ‘A Book for Kids’ 1921

IMG_20180801_210630 — Poem by Clarence Michael James Dennis, better known as Australian poet C J Dennis (Sept 1876 – June 1938) who had a variety of jobs, from bar tender, secretary to a senator, to publisher and editor. He is fondly remembered for the humorous stories and verse he wrote for big city newspapers and was dubbed ‘laureate of the larrikin’ which means he penned prose about boisterous, unruly people. GBW.

Ever get poetry nostalgia? Australian school children learn poems by C J Dennis, Henry Lawson, Banjo Paterson and many more. Often a particular poet’s verse follows them through life, even though their lives are nothing like the rough and tumble era in which these pioneer poets wrote.

Changes were afoot in Australia in late nineteenth/early twentieth century and were reflected in the country’s poetry. In the evening, after dinner, someone would recite a poem or two. Years later, I grew up with Banjo Paterson’s ‘The Man From Snowy River’, a rollicking ode to bush men, stock riders, the dangerously rugged land and the great value of horses.

♥ Gretchen Bernet-Ward