2005, 295 p.
I was browsing around my local library the other night and caught sight of “Bright Planet” and smiled. I read it several years ago and loved it, and given that some of you may have been lured here by a search related to early Port Phillip, you might love it too.
I’m a difficult customer as far as historical fiction is concerned. I feel smothered by too much research if it means that the story is battling to escape, but on the other hand I am annoyed by small inaccuracies and a basic inauthenticity when twenty-first century ideas are put into nineteenth-century heads. I first heard of this book during the brouhaha between Kate Grenville and Inga Clendinnen over Grenville’s book The Secret River, where it was held up as an example of a novelist using history well.
Bright Planet is the name of a ship- and it really is, too! After reading this book, each time I came across Bright Planet in the shipping news column in Port Phillip newspapers, I’d have a little smile to myself. It sails into Bareheep (one of the early names suggested for Melbourne, and strongly recognizable as Robyn Annear’s Bearbrass) and the small town forms the backdrop for a succession of walk-on Port Phillip characters, Johnny Fawkner, John Batman complete with his diseased nose and Mr Le Soeuf the Aboriginal protector. There’s a slew of fictional characters as well, who could just be true, including Quiet Giles the botantist, who sails up what seems like the Yarra on a fictional expedition. In best Voss-meets- Monty-Python tradition, there are a string of deaths through a whole range of misadventure, and it’s an irreverent romp through a young, bawdy town on the edge of the unknown. It’s not true and it plays with the historical fiction genre. It’s very carefully researched and, in its way is a critique of colonialism and imperial masculinity. But don’t let that put you off: dammit- it’s just downright good fun.
If I’ve piqued your interest, there’s a transcript of an interview with the author from the ABC’s Book Talk program.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 
I am so glad you are annoyed “by small inaccuracies and a basic inauthenticity when twenty-first century ideas are put into nineteenth-century heads” 🙂
If I don’t know anything about the history of the country being discussed, mistakes slide by me easily. But if it is an era and country that I know very well, mistakes yawn widely and spoil the pleasure. Valley Girl English, that horrible version of 1980s Californian English, should never appear in any books, in my opinion. Let alone in books about Russian agricultural pioneers creating a socialist dream in the 1880s.
Good heavens! What book was that?? Warn me to avoid!
Have skimmed your post as my Dad has just finished this very book and it’s sitting by my elbow to pick up lol.
Dad gave it a thumbs up, btw 😉
I’m glad that he enjoyed it too. I’m aware that all this Port Phillip-ing might have turned my head, so I’m glad to have my opinion confirmed!
Pingback: Six degrees of separation: From ‘The Turn of the Screw’ to…. | The Resident Judge of Port Phillip
Pingback: Six Degrees of Separation: from ‘The Lottery’ to… | The Resident Judge of Port Phillip