‘The Visitors’ by Jane Harrison

Sometimes it seems that a work written first as a play really struggles to transcend its stage origins. This is the case with Jane Harrison’s The Visitors which imagines the response of local tribes to the arrival of the First Fleet in January 1788. The author, herself of Muruwari descent, ventures where non-Indigenous authors might hesitate to tread and Tony Birch’s blurb embraces it as “a remarkable achievement of First Nations storytelling”.

The book starts with seventeen-year old Lawrence who first notices the nowee on the horizon, its white sails billowing in the wind. His Uncles decide that Elder Gary should be notified, as it is his turn to host the next seasonal meeting of Elders. It is decided that the meeting should be held on the neighbouring Gordon’s land, which strategically overlooks the waters of Sydney Cove. The word goes out to seven mobs who send their Elders to discuss this second appearance of nowees, the first having arrived with Captain Cook eighteen years earlier. Cook departed: surely these ones will, too. Reminiscent of the interminable collection of adventurers in Lord of the Rings, the Elders are gathered in, chapter by chapter, with each given a back-story.

But these Elders, all with non-indigenous names (Lawrence, Gary, Gordon, Joseph, Nathaniel, Walter and Albert) arrive in business-suits, upending our time-frame as readers, and many of their back-stories are Oprah-esque in their relationship detail and more than a little imbued with 21st century values. The dialogue is presented in script form. The ships- eleven by now- show few signs of moving on, and the Elders joined by young Lawrence himself, need to decide how to respond. To fight or to welcome? In a Twelve Angry Men-esque scenario, Elder Walter, gradually convinces the other Elders that they cannot know why the visitors are here, and that they may bring things- like an axe that he found- that will improve their lives. We all know how this is going to end. Young Lawrence, who had disobeyed instructions to paddle out to investigate for himself, is sneezing and unwell and we know that these ‘visitors’ were here to stay.

I think that I would have preferred to see this on the stage, rather than on the page. Apparently the author did a lot of research in converting it to a novel, and the research feels very didactic at times and clags up the narrative. It’s an interesting concept of decentering the First Fleet story- and ‘what ifs’ are my guilty secret as a historian- and while playing with timespans through suits and names, it foregrounds the social complexity and agency of the watchers on the shore. I just wish that the author didn’t feel that she had to ‘educate’ me.

My rating: 6/10

Sourced from: Yarra Plenty Regional Library