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Tag Archives: New South Wales

“Lag”: Shepherd

04 Monday Jul 2022

Posted by Novelhistorian in Reviews and Columns

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"lags", 1840, Australia, book review, Catherine Jinks, convicts, exile as punishment, historical fiction, indigenous people, lawlessness, nature, New South Wales, no and furthermore, racism, thriller, tracking, violence, wilderness

Review: Shepherd, by Catherine Jinks
Text Publishing, 2019. 226 pp. $30 AU

New South Wales, 1840. Tom Clay, transported to Australia at age twelve for poaching in Suffolk, has always loved animals and been good with them. It’s people he has trouble with, especially the murderous types British courts have inflicted on their infant colony in the name of justice. But as long as Tom can stick to tending sheep at the outpost station, he’s got a loyal dog, Gyp, and life’s not so bad.

John Oxley’s chart of part of the New South Wales interior, 1822, from Moreton Bay to Port Philip (courtesy State Library of New South Wales Z/Cc 82/1-3, via Wikimedia Commons)

Trouble is, Dan Carver, a fellow employee of the same rancher, has killed a couple of their coworkers and seems to be just getting started on the others. Consequently, young Tom, who, by rights, should be learning his letters in an English school, has to move fast to save his skin and that of Rowdy Cavanaugh, a glib jokester whose crime in England was passing counterfeit coin. His garrulousness, which he either can’t control or doesn’t care to, makes stealthy movement difficult if not impossible, and may cost Tom and him their lives.

I should add that the phrase by rights doesn’t exist for criminals like Tom, or for anyone else sent to Australia for punishment — “lagged,” it’s called. Therefore, even if Tom somehow manages to evade Carver and alert the rancher, he’s likely as not to hang for Carver’s murders. Nobody believes a “lag,” and when it’s one lag’s word against another, the stronger, older man will likely prevail.

As you may have guessed, this excellent thriller — I defy you to start it and put it down — has more to offer than unending sequences of “no — and furthermore,” gripping though they are. Shepherd tells the grisly, heart-breaking story of how lags come to Australia, or how Tom does, and the various stratagems he must employ to stay alive, let alone avoid flogging or any other casual brutality his masters may devise.

In beautifully crafted, brief flashbacks that seamlessly flow with the main narrative, you learn about the boy’s harrowing sea journey from England, the filthy so-called majesty of the law, and his dreadful childhood in a family of poachers: “I don’t think I’ve slept easy since I was in my mother’s womb.” Shepherd spares nothing, yet I never find the violence gratuitous or sense it’s included for shock value.

I wish the novel didn’t start with a prologue, and Jinks doesn’t need to tell the reader what’s coming, because her first chapter pulls you in right away. However, I like the writing in the prologue, which shows you much about young Tom in few words:

When I first came here, I thought it a cruel affliction to walk through a wood and not know what bird was singing, or which plants were safe to eat. Now I understand it’s more than an affliction; it’s certain death.
I see nothing around me that I can properly name. Ferns. Vines. Bushes. Trees that shed their bark instead of their leaves. Flowers with spikes instead of petals.
I’m going to die wordless, in a lonely hollow in a strange land. I’m going to die among beasts that I don’t understand and plants that have killed me.

The passage suggests both the author’s gift for spare, direct prose and characterization: “I’m going to die among beasts I don’t understand and plants that kill me.” For Tom’s a born tracker, the one advantage he possesses in his attempt to escape Carver or get the drop on him — plans and circumstances change rapidly. How the boy copes with the natural world would make a novel in itself, for his knowledge and ingenuity constantly surprise; yet, as the prologue says, he’s conscious of what he doesn’t know.

His skill and humility set him apart from the other colonists. He’s also alone in his admiration for the Black indigenous people and their understanding of the land, flora, and fauna. He fears them too, because of what they might do, though Carver’s and their boss’s treatment of them troubles Tom. There’s muted social commentary in that as well, and though the indigenous folk linger on the fringes of the narrative, you sense them watching the whites act like maniacs.

This slim volume has a lot going for it — a lightning-paced story, a landscape physically rendered in emotionally resonant detail, and a teenager fighting not only for his life, but to live decently, in a place where no one understands the concept. Few Australian novels reach our shores, unfortunately, unless a major house picks them up. I wish more Americans knew about this small press in Melbourne, Text, which has given us Shepherd and also A Room Made of Leaves, by Kate Grenville.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Selfless and Selfish: Rush Oh!

02 Monday May 2016

Posted by Novelhistorian in Reviews and Columns

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aggression, Australia, George Davidson, historical fiction, humor, killer whales, literary fiction, New South Wales, orcas, Shirley Barrett, whaling

Review: Rush Oh!, by Shirley Barrett
Little, Brown, 2016. 353 pp. $25

Where I live, in Seattle, whales are both a cultural icon and a marvel. Only the other week, a gray whale wandered into the locks between Lakes Union and Washington. As you may imagine, that created a stir and a delicate rescue operation, as cetaceans aren’t known for their ability to make U-turns in narrow lanes. I also fondly recall family vacations with the kids in Canada’s Gulf Islands, between the coast of Washington and Vancouver Island, where we often saw pods of orcas swim past, a marine ballet of such beauty that I felt honored, small, and insignificant.

Twofold Bay, New South Wales, was an important whaling center (Courtesy Wikemedia Commons; public domain).

Twofold Bay, New South Wales, was an important whaling center (Courtesy Wikemedia Commons; public domain).

So I picked up Rush Oh!, a novel about whaling in Australia during the early twentieth century, with a stone in my heart. Was I supposed to root for the impoverished whaling families who went hungry if they sold no whale oil or whalebone, or the magnificent creatures of the deep? And, once I began reading, what was I supposed to make of the orcas that harried the larger whales into harpoon range in return for a literal cut of the profits? Were they traitors or friends?

However, I’m happy to report that Rush Oh! is a wonderful book, a delicate authorial operation that surprises and enchants with no heavy lifting. Barrett glosses over nothing, neither the brutality of killing and capturing a whale, nor the characters of the men who do this work at Twofold Bay, nor the hardscrabble life of Eden, New South Wales. But this isn’t a novel about whaling as much as it is about love, or the lengths a person can and should go to get what he or she wants. Just as it takes great effort to track and capture a whale, so it does to find love or realize a dream.

At nineteen, Mary Davidson has particular trouble realizing her own–or even allowing herself to have them. In the six years since her mother died, she’s been maid-of-all-work at her father’s whaling station and surrogate mother to her younger brothers and sisters. She cooks for the family and the whaling crews, keeps house, teaches her siblings their letters, and makes sure her father, a respected man of whom she’s in awe, has what he needs. Mary wants more from life but also assumes that servitude is her lot and that she has no choice, either as a woman or as George “Fearless” Davidson’s eldest child. She might have had an easier time had she social graces, a fair face, or the courage to speak up. Those belong to the next sister in line, Louisa; their rivalry frames the story.

Mary hungers for warmth, whether from her father, siblings, or a man, and gets precious little. She notices that the whaling men stop swearing and mind their manners when Louisa’s around, entranced by her looks and “the will-o’-the-wisp way she floated about, avoiding anything that might look like work. The various flaws of her character seemed to pass undetected.”

One pleasure of reading Rush Oh! is Mary’s wry, naive voice, a pitch-perfect narration. You see what she sees and laugh, but you also see what she misses, which is a lot. For instance, Louisa is indeed a piece of work, selfish and willful. But her real advantage over Mary is that she knows what she wants and sets out to get it. Nowhere is the comparison more evident than in Mary’s attraction for John Beck, a newcomer to the whaling crew who may (or may not) have been a Methodist minister. In fact, there are several things he may or may not have done. But Mary falls for him, and the reader senses that hers is a heart about to be broken.

I love witty writing, and there’s plenty here. Consider this passage about Mr. and Mrs. Maudry, the family’s name for a pair of aggressive plovers that

. . . when they were not preoccupied with matters nesting . . . contented themselves with stalking broodingly about the garden and glowering at us. Mr. Maudry in particular possessed a malevolent air similar to that of a Land and Tax officer or Customs agent, an effect enhanced by the plovers’ plumage, in which nature appeared to be imitating the black-collared suit coats of the kind favored by my late paternal grandfather. By all accounts entirely capable of flight, the Maudrys for the most part elected not to, preferring to spend their days instead lurking ominously amongst the jonquils.

About those orcas, known as Killers. They have names, behaviors particular to each individual, a sense of humor, and loyalty to the whalers, who consider it a crime to kill one–especially the Aboriginal hunters, who believe each orca holds an ancestor’s spirit. These creatures actually existed; one, known as Tom, lived about sixty years, and when he died in 1930, the newspapers noted the fact.

All of which underlines how Rush Oh! plumbs the space between truth and fiction, and what you think you know about each.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

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