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2013,  261p.

I don’t know what to say.

On the opening page, a knife etches its way down an arm between the shoulder and elbow. “The scalpel finds the deepest skin, the dermis, the little yellow pillows of fat like pearls.  Bluish-red bloodlines seep down my right arm, over my right breast.”   This is the first of several self-harm episodes in this book.  It is followed by yet another hospitalization, yet more prescriptions, a shaky scrambling together again, then more self-harm, more hospitalization, more prescriptions…

A small preface to this book says:

This memoir relies on the many volumes of notes, observations, conversations, odd phrases and sudden ideas written during episodes of illness and transcribed here unedited.  It also relies on memory, which is commonly subjective and fragile, and on the notes of treating clinicians.  The events took place over a period of about fifteen years.  In the interests of telling a story, time is on occasion expanded and on occasion compressed.

And thus we climb into Kate Richard’s life and it’s not a good place to be.  She is a qualified doctor, but years of mental illness have made this career path untenable for her.  There is  this chaotic, obsessive, hyper-sensitive existence inside her head that somehow co-exists falteringly with the semblance of a ‘normal’ life: a job in medical research, friends, parents, a flat.

She makes us privy to the people who live inside her head: something that she deliberately does not share with the psychiatrists and therapists she comes into contact with.   The voices she hears are ugly:  garrotte garrotte garrotte the world will spin you into obsidian oblivion keep the fires burning watch yourself muddy red.  We watch her resist taking medication, make mistakes, treat people (including herself) badly.  It is relentless.  There is no escape for her, or you as reader, from the suffocating presence of her head.

The text is broken up in places by pages of her handwriting from her journal. She is a true writer, with an eye that captures the essence of things, but it is a gift that can be turned against her as well.  At times of illness, her words trigger clang associations that are not poetic, but just chaotic.  Language breaks down.

Her critique of the psychiatric and medical system is devastating.  Psychiatrists are too quick to prescribe;  after an episode of self-harm, a doctor in a hospital refuses to treat her and she is vulnerable to the whims of the system. But she has a good GP, Jenny, and when she finds her psychologist, Winsome,  it is like a haven of calm.  Winsome tells her that her mental illness is a sickness that she will need to treat with medication day in and day out, for the rest of her life and finally, finally, Kate herself reaches the same conclusion.  As a reader, you start to hope, with her,  that perhaps this spiral of medication and madness might finally slow down.

This is such a brave book.  It is simply written, but it is hard to read.

Other reviews:

Christine from Freud in Oceania has written an excellent review.

I have added this to my reviews on the Australian Women Writers Challenge website.

There was a birthday in our house yesterday: Mr J’s, not mine. Even though it didn’t end in ‘0’, it was the birthday that the Beatles sang about, so that calls for a celebration, I reckon.

We went to Charcoal Lane, in Gertrude Street.  I haven’t been to Gertrude Street in a while and my, my- hasn’t it changed! The restaurant is situated in the old Aboriginal Health Service building, which is very appropriate.  The building is no longer decked out in its proud black, red and yellow but is instead a very stark white.  The building itself has had an interesting history: first the ES&A bank, then the VD clinic, then the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service where it served as a central spot for the local Koorie community.

The restaurant is run under the auspices of Mission Australia as a training venture for Aboriginal and other disadvantaged young people- similar I suppose to those Jamie Oliver type enterprises.  The food is bushtucker-inspired and very good.  We had a tasting platter first which included a fantastic kangaroo chorizo, followed by emu fillets as a main course.  I’ve never had emu before- a bit chewy in places, but an interesting flavour, served with little brussell sprouts with kaiserflesch , potato gratin and a red wine jus. Then a double chocolate and wattleseed cake which was just a sliver, but a very rich sliver.  It ended up being $120.00 for the two of us.

The service was good-  enthusiastic and very attentive.  It was just right. The interior and fittings are beautiful- you wouldn’t recognize the place.  It’s a win all round.

One of the real advantages of Steve only working four days a week is that every weekend is a long weekend.  We’re taking advantage of the beautiful autumn weather to take a weekend down at Phillip Island.  Yes, THAT Phillip Island which Matthew Guy is getting all het up about. My, he’s as cross as patch, isn’t he?  I think he doth protest too much.  Something very fishy about it all, I reckon.  What a joke that IBAC can’t investigate politicians.

Nonetheless, I really don’t know why we don’t come down here more often.  It’s only 90 minutes from Melbourne, on freeways the whole way.  It really is quite beautiful.

We’re staying at a Genesta B&B in Cowes. Very nice it is, too.  Full marks for having a top sheet and summer blanket that can be used instead of the pretty but stiflingly hot doona.  I can’t work out why more places don’t do the same.

It’s on a quiet side street that abuts onto Westernport Bay, about three minutes walk away.   Have you ever wondered why Westernport bay is actually located east of Port Phillip Bay?  That’s because Bass, who named it, did not venture any further west than this before heading back up along the eastern coast.  This bay WAS west of the coast that he had charted.  Apparently the Bunurong name for it is Warn’marring.   Given that Westernport Bay is east of  Melbourne, that would be a pretty good case for renaming it, I reckon.

If you’ve been to Phillip Island (and most people in Melbourne have been at some stage), you’ll probably remember the Isle of Wight Hotel overlooking the pier.

Rather ordinary, I must admit, but I saw photographs of it at the local Historical Society this morning, and it was originally a mock-tudor hotel built in the early 1930s.  It was rather attractive, and reminiscent of the guest houses that used to be in Marysville.  It was built to replace an earlier wooden hotel that had been on the site and burnt down.

Well, it ain’t there now.  The site has been empty for four years.  Is that a burning rat I smell?

The empty site

Yep, it probably is the best site on the island

Whatever they build there will have quite a view

Phillip Island is well known for its penguins and koalas.  It’s a very popular destination for bus tours of international tourists who want a day trip to see furry animals.

We went to see the Penguins last night.  I can’t quite remember the controversy over the Seal Rocks Centre or whatever it was…something about Jeff Kennett?  Well,  whatever it was then, it’s now a huge slick place full of shops and merchandise  and cafeterias.  Still, the penguins are the real show.  The lights on the beach are dimmer than I remember them being, and you sit in two large ampitheatres facing the sea. At first you can’t see the penguins at all (although you can hear them), then they seem to just materialize out of the waves.  They huddle in a little cluster like shy, giggling, stagestruck toddlers, they scuttle up in a group into the sand dunes.  There were three main groups of them that we saw- there may have been more, but we decided to leave by then.  The sky was clear and the stars magnificent.  I was rather proud that I was able to identify Mars when it rose.

Then today over to Churchill Island.  It’s a beautiful, tranquil spot.  Thank you, Dick Hamer, for purchasing it for us all.  Lt. Grant established the first farm there in 1801 although they can’t locate the exact site. Now surely that’s  a 3-day job for Time Team, I reckon- the first white agricultural site in what is now Victoria?  The first permanent settlers between 1860 and 1866  were Samuel and Winifred Pickersgill, but he lost possession of it in a card game.  It was taken over by John and Sarah Rogers who lived there until 1872, when it was purchased by the successful stonemason and ex-Lord Mayor of Melbourne Samuel Amess. He built the holiday house that is the main building there today.  You can read more about the history of Churchill Island here.  I must dust off my copy of A.G.L. Shaw’s The History of the Port Phillip District when I get home and re-read those first chapters.

Steve outside the Amess house

A moonah tree. The Bunurong saw them as as sacred

The moonah trees have unusual trunks. They look almost as if they are plaited stone.

Beside a cairn celebrating Lt. Grant and his wheat crop

Some Cape Barren geese. You see them everywhere

In 1954 the Melbourne Metropolitan Board of Works produced a film showing the planning challenges that faced Melbourne, that “vast metropolis of one and a half million people”.  The 17 minute film is available in full here:

http://www.theage.com.au/comment/past-planning-problems-are-present-predicaments-in-melbourne-20140321-358gm.html

I was surprised to see so many women in the footage of the city, and despondent to see the absolute dearth of women in the planning offices of the MMBW.  I had a chuckle at the apocalyptic music that accompanied scenes of traffic jams and am puzzled by the footage of new suburbs which look a bit like West Heidelberg or perhaps Ashwood with their housing commission homes.  The images of the slums must predate their demolition and replacement by the inner city high-rise Housing Commission flats.

I wonder what happened to the survey conducted by all those university students? I mourn the loss of planning for the “rural zone around the city”.

Well worth a look!

As a historian of British colonial societies, particularly focussing on the colonizers rather than the colonized, you often come across people who are parodies of themselves.  At time I feel that way about my own subject, Judge Willis.   It is even more true of the people who populate the pages of this book which highlights the decadence and moral vapidity of this bunch of British expatriate misfits in Kenya during World War II.

In the early hours of January 24^th 1941 the body of Josslyn Hay, the Earl of Errol was discovered in a crashed car at a junction near Karen.  At first it was thought that he had run off the road, but closer inspection revealed that he had been shot at close range behind the ear.   The main suspect was Jock Delves Broughton, the sixty year old husband of the young and beautiful Diana, who was having an open affair with Josslyn Hay.  He was charged with the crime and the case heard in the Kenya Supreme Court. He was acquitted of the crime but many felt that he had, in fact, committed the murder or arranged for it to be committed, and even Hay himself confessed and denied the crime from time to time.  Multiple books and articles have been devoted to the question of Who Killed Josslyn Hay, but this is possibly the best known of them, forming is the basis of the recent film starring Greta Schacci and Charles Dance.

The British government officially took control of the Kenya Protectorate in 1895 in order to compete with German imperial expansion in East Africa.  To counter the German railway from the port of Tanga in what is now Tanzania, the British quickly began construction of the 580 mile long  Mombasa to Lake Victoria railway (on which I am travelling at this very minute).  Nairobi was established in 1899 as the last possible rail depot before the track climbed the Kikuyu escarpment overlooking the Rift Valley.  A scheme was produced in 1901 by the Commissioner of East Africa to encourage settlers to farm the land, thereby creating profits for the railway through haulage costs.  The first wave of settlers arrived in 1903 from Britain, Canada, Australia and South Africa, and they were followed by a second wave, drawn from the Edwardian aristocracy and British officer class.  They included peers of the realm and their younger brothers who were victims of primogeniture, millionaires and wasters who had cruelled their chances in England through scandal and bankruptcy.  Kenya was particularly attractive to the aristocrats.  The Kenyan highlands had an English or Scottish air and there were servants aplenty to protect them from hard work on their own behalf.  All this was at the expense of the African population.

This is a different type of colonialism to that which I have encountered in my studies of the 1820s-40s.  There is no frontier as such, just lines on a map drawn up in part of the scramble for African amongst the European powers.  They feared sunshine and madness, but for these aristocrats at least, there was not the contingency of life and death on a distant frontier.  The experience of the 19^th century gave them a bombastic confidence in the treaties that they could produce almost by template by this stage, and all the qualms of the humanitarians that constrained (officially at least) the excesses of colonialism had been soothed and put at rest.  The ready availability of divorce for those who could afford it led to a succession of ill-fated marriages, and the alcohol, drug use and promiscuity of the Bright Young Things  back in England translated well to a Kenyan context. I’m finding many familiar names from 1840s colonialism, one generation on.  They are a quite different class of colonist to their parents and grandparents.This familiarity with an older type of colonialism has perhaps made me somewhat more tolerant of this bunch of indulged and heedless sybarites than other readers might be.  They are truly awful.

The book is presented as creative non-fiction, and I have no reason to distrust this framing narrative.  The author, James Fox, was a journalist working alongside the cultural critic Cyril Connolly who was himself the contemporary of many of the main protagonists.  Connolly had been obsessed by the story for many years and they co-wrote a newspaper article about it, which flushed out many ex-Kenyans and family members who had their own take on What Really Happened.  Connolly had died before penning his own account, and Fox took possession of his notebooks and continued the quest. This book is the result.

It is divided into two sections: The Murder and the Quest.  In the first section he introduces each of the main characters and their possible motives for wanting Joss Hay (also known as Errol) dead. He also argues against himself, pointing out the holes in the argument that might place them as the murderer.  In this regard, the lengthy ‘Cast of Characters’ at the start of the book is particularly useful, especially in tracking the marriages, divorces and intermarriages and the frequent change of title as peers ascended the table of precedence.  So too is the index, which is extensive.

In the second section, James Fox himself takes centre stage as he tracks down those participants still living or their descendants, culminating in what he thinks is the definite answer.  Of course, the continued publication of recent books suggests that many others think that Fox and Connolly have got it wrong.

It is hard to get past one’s revulsion for these larger-than-life characters and their lifestyle.  But I have recently met someone who could be a dead-ringer for any of these characters, holding tight to a vanished lifestyle and discredited politics.   The continued interest in the question suggests that this particular past is not yet a foreign country (to paraphrase L.P. Hartley), or at least that there are some who wish to hold on to it still.

My daughter and I are  off to visit the Lad and his Lady in Kenya.  I’m blogging the great adventure at http://landofincreasingsunshine.wordpress.com/

2013,  458 p & notes

All Australian schoolchildren – and perhaps Victorian ones in particular- at some stage (and often more than once) encounter the Eureka Rebellion.  It’s quite a flashpoint in a constitutional history that has rather a dearth of such things.  Ballarat has made good tourist use of it. The  Sovereign Hill Tourist Park has leveraged its sound-and-light show from it for many years, complete with burning hotels and gunshot.  As well I know, having visited Ballarat many times.  We used to go to there every September for the South Street Eisteddfod, first to see a niece on the stage, then to see  a daughter. Bakery Hill (now dominated by McDonalds) and the stylized stockade on the site that is now the Museum of Australian Democracy are very familiar to me.  But even for those not subjected to the icy Ballarat winds every September, Eureka is something that you tend to ‘do’ at school and tuck away as part of your Australian consciousness.

Clare Wright’s book The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka is big, bold and different.  Published by Text Publishing in hardback only so far, it takes the Eureka uprising and puts people into it: particularly women and children, but also storekeepers, commandants, theatre owners, newspaper proprietors and publicans.  It’s a noisy book.  Her opening sentence to Chapter One is

You could hear Ballarat before seeing it. (p. 19)

and voices clamour in this book for attention.  It teems with personalities, some of whom recur frequently, others who are encountered once then pass by.  Wright is the politest of guides: she takes you to her main informants and introduces you to them properly.  It’s a technique that Inga Clendinnen used so masterfully in Dancing with Strangers, and Wright uses it well too. Not only do you have a leap of recognition when you meet them again, but you’re able to detect change of mood and circumstance and gain some sense of people living through an event instead of being just stationary props.  And they talk!  Letters, diaries, memoirs-  Wright has combed carefully and weaves their words into her text as italicized phrases, only rarely and deliberately breaking her narrative to provide block quotations.  While the book is crafted from primary sources, she carries on a conversation with other historians as well, both in the text and in the footnotes that, commendably,  Text has not stinted on,  in what could probably be marketed as ‘popular history’ (whatever that means).

The book opens on Monday 4th December 1854.  On the preceding morning at 3.00 a.m.  troops and police had stormed the hastily constructed stockade in a twenty-minute attack.  The numbers killed are still debated. But the goldfields themselves that morning were quiet.

In Part I, ‘ Transitions’, she rewinds to November 1853 as one of her main informants, Charles Evans (thought to be Samuel Lazarus until Wright’s own research identified him correctly) arrives in Ballarat.  He was just one of a flood of gold seekers who arrived in Melbourne,  and Wright traces through the arrival experience as the tide pulls him, along with a bobbing host of other characters, to Ballarat.

Part II, Transformations, takes the year 1854 as its site of analysis, drawing a vivid, bustling, LOUD picture of goldfields life.  But its not the ‘digger and his mate’ experience of an S. T. Gill watercolour.  As she points out, Ballarat was not the male-dominated diggings of our imagination.  With 6650 women, 2150 children and 10,700 men, it had the highest female proportion of any of the Victorian goldfields.  While there were shafts and tailings and mud, there were also clothes lines sagging with washing,buying and selling, visiting, entertaining, and babies being conceived and born as a shadowplay on the walls of flimsy tents.

Part III ‘Transgressions’ moves to Spring 1854  and the burning of Bentley’s hotel and its aftermath in the courtrooms of Melbourne.  We’ve been in this hotel before, with Catherine Bentley, the publican’s wife.   Wright takes us to the military camp on (of course) Camp Hill and the administrative play between the newly-arrived Governor Hotham and the military and police contingents.   The action moves inexorably to Sunday morning 3rd December 1854 where it slows down, then unfolds in a nightmare slow-motion.  She does not spend much time on the battle itself- leaving that to others- but instead watches the raw, keening grief afterwards.  In a rapid shift of tine, her concluding section ‘A Day at the Races’ has a brisk “move on” feel to it as the events of Bloody Sunday are commemorated, forgotten, rediscovered, burnished, embroidered and used for various purposes.  An epilogue bids farewell to the characters we have met as they drift away from the gold fields into other endeavours, or become entwined into family trees diligently tended by their genealogist descendants.

While Eureka is the flashpoint, the real strength of the book is peopling the event and the wider context with flesh and blood, often unknown characters.  The emphasis is very much on women, and writing them back into the story that they always inhabited- but it’s not just about women.  There is a conscious emphasis on Jewish emigrants, American gold-seekers and a consciousness of the Aboriginal people whose lands were deluged by this flood of humanity. Nor is it just about the rebels, because she distinguishes carefully between the military and the police and explicates carefully the politics of Eureka from the government perspective as well.

Nonetheless, there is a very strong feminist intent to the book.  It is, perhaps a little strained, as in her explanation of the drifting away of men from the stockade in the hours immediately preceding the attack and her suggestion that rape might have been one of the outrages committed in the aftermath.  Both of these are offered only as suggestions- and historians can make suggestions, with evidence- but at this point the murmurings and conversations of her informants who have borne her so confidently through the rest of the narrative drop away, and it is only her voice left speaking.

And a distinctive voice it is.  Clare Wright often appears on Australian history documentaries- for example, in Utopia Girls– where her narrative voice is warm, with a burble of humour.  It struck me when reading this book that it is a particularly visual work, staged and narrated much as a lengthy documentary might be.  The chapters are divided into scenes, marked with asterisks, as the action swings from one character to another, and many conclude with ‘cliff-hanger’ comments that lead onto the next scene.  It is sustained throughout the whole book, which at 458 pages is a lot of talking.  It is such an insistent, strong voice that I think that your response to the book would be very much influenced by how you respond to the teller.

That said, this is one of those books that would make you look at familiar events with new eyes.  It is a compelling read that is well-researched and scholarly and at the same time very, very human.

Yvonne Perkins at Stumbling Through the Past has written a very detailed review- well worth reading.

This is my first review for the Australian Women Writers Challenge 2014.