C=X~'-------------------------------------------------------------------<= c=x .<= ~ <= c=x ,<= g Enjoy your Winter leisure and prepare 8§ ~ .<= g for Spring with a good book from the g West's senior book publisher UWAP:g 5gg c=x .<= g r----~ g g: ~~ ~ ~ c=x .<=<= c=x ,<= c=x ,.<= c=x .<= c=x .<= c=x .<= c=x .<= ~' <= ~ .<= c=x .<= c=x ,<=' ~ ,<= ~ g ~.<= ~g c=x .<= c=x .<= c=x .<= c=x .<= ~ ,.<= 5 ~ g:':=>< ,.<=g ~ <= ~ .<= ~ .<= ~ <= ~ .<= ':=>< ,.<= c=x <= ~ .<= c=x ~ g:~ ,.<=g ~g ~ Birding Sites Around Perth ,~ g by RON VAN DELFT, R.A.O.U. 8§ c=x ~ c=x ,.<= c=x ~ g A 'must for both the casual and serious birdwatcher • Pocket-size durable soft cover § 5 Economical at RRP $9.95 ,8 ~ ,.<= ~ .<= ~ .<= c=x .<= 5 ~g 5 ~~ ~ ~ 2 g Western Australian plant names and their meanings g c=x .<= g A GLOSSARY g '§ by F.A. SHARR ~ '~ .<= g ~ ':=>< Revised and reprinted to satisfy demand for this unique work. ,<= g Invaluable for professional and amateur botanists and horticulturalists. ~ g RRP $16.50 g ,~,8 c=x .<= g ''':','' UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA PRESS g ~ I~""'"~ ~ ~ ~ ,,!S;!I Nedlands, WA 6009. Telephone 3803182, 3803187 ~ 5 M ~ ORDER THROUGH YOUR BOOKSELLER g c=x .<= g ~ CONTENTS WESTERLY VOLUME 33, No.2, JUNE 1988 STORIES The Garden of Weeds Ross Bunde 15 Not Being Miriam Marion Campbell 121 Johnny Snowball Stephen Faulds 79 Story Joan Fox 135 The Wanderer Rodney Goodbun 21 Room for One Yu-Li Hu 19 Spite Julie Lewis 138 Rising Chris McLeod 86 Across the Tracks Glyn Parry 119 God is Merciful Geraldine Wooller 83 POEMS Diane Beckingham 12 Andrew Lansdown 77 Rosemary Buss 75 Roland Leach 141 Kay Borman 76 Asa Le Tourneau 56 Alex Choate 8 Shane McCauley 58 Hal Colebatch 156 Joyce Parkes 126 Faye Davis 22 Philip Salom IOI Paul Hetherington II7 Dennis Schofield II4 Dorothy Hewett 124 ARTICLES The Return of the Repressed: J.B. O'Reilly Veronica Brady 105 The Early Years of Katharine Susannah Prichard Sandra Burchill 89 Gold and the Novel Peter Cowan 31 Hesperian Varieties: New WA Drama Cliff Gillam 127 Randolph Stow - Silence, Exile and Cunning Dorothy Hewett 59 Easter Moon Easter Lily Elizabeth Jolley 5 Sojourn in the Sky: Philip Salom's Sky Poems Anna Rutherford and Kirsten Holst Petersen 67 CUddlepie and Other Surrogates George Seddon 143 REVIEWS P.AE. Hutchings & Julie Lewis 'Kathleen O'Connor' Tom Gibbons 159 Peter Cowan 'Maitland Brown' Vera Whittington 161 CONTRIBUTORS 163 Cover design by Susan Eve Ellvey of Designpoint using a photograph by Jean-Jacques Syllebranque by courtesy of Photo Index. WESTERLY The National Quarterly from the West WESTERLY subscriptions may now be paid with Bankcard, MasterCard and Visa Card - by mail or telephone (09 380 2101). Please quote your card number, expiry date, and indicate which card you are using. WESTERLY is excellent value at $16 p.a. (4 issues, posted); students $14; $30 for 2 years (8 issues, posted); $5 single copies (posted); back copies and Indexes of past issues available. Subscriptions sent by mail should be addressed to: The Secretary, CSAL Department of English The University of Western Australia NEDLANDS, WA 6009 This publication has received fmancial ~tance from the Western Australian Government to celebrate Australia's Bicentenary in 1988. 2 WESTERLY, No.2, JUNE, 1988 WESTERLY a quarterly review ISSN 0043-342x EDITORS: Bruce lknnett, Peter Cowan, Dennis Haskell EDITORIAL ADVISORS: Margot Luke, Hilary Fraser, Delys Bird EDITORIAL CONSULTANTS: Diana Brydon (University of British Columbia), John Hay (Monash University), Dorothy Hewett (Sydney), Brian Matthews (Flinders University), Vincent O'Sullivan (Victoria University, Wellington), Peter Porter (London), Anna Rutherford (University of Aarhus), Edwin Thumboo (National University of Singapore), Albert Wertheim (University of Indiana) SECRETARY: Caroline Horobin Westerly is published quarterly at the Centre for Studies in Australian Literature in the English Department, University of Western Australia with assistance from The Literary Arts Board of the Australia Council, the Federal Government's arts funding and advisory body, and the Western Australian Department for the Arts. The opinions expressed in JH?sterly are those of individual contributors and not of the Editors or Editorial Advisors. Correspondence should be addressed to the Editors, Westerly, Department of English, University of Western Australia, Nedlands, Western Australia 6009 (telephone (09) 380 3838). Unsolicited manuscripts not accompanied by a stamped self-addressed envelope will not be returned. All manuscripts must show the name and address of the sender and should be typed (double-spaced) on one side of the paper only. Whilst every care is taken of manuscripts, the editors can take no final responsibility for their return; contributors are consequently urged to retain copies of all work submitted. Minimum rates for contributors - poems $20.00; prose pieces $50.00; reviews, articles, $40.00. It is stressed that these are minimum rates, based on the fact that very brief contributions in any field are acceptable. In practice the editors aim to pay more, and will discuss payment where required. Recommended sale price: $5.00 per copy (W.A.) Subscriptions: $16.00 per annum (posted); $30.00 for 2 years (posted). Special student subscription rate: $14.00 per annum (posted). Single copies mailed: $5.00. Subscriptions should be made payable to Westerly and sent to The Secretary, CSAL, Department of English, University of Western Australia, NedIands, Western Australia 6009. In other States Westerly may be obtained from: New South Wales, Victoria, ACT and Tasmania: Hale & Iremonger Pty. Ltd., Tel: (02) 560 4977 and (03) 537 1624. Queensland: Tema Agencies, Tel: (07) 378 6190. Work published in JH?sterly is cited in: Abstracts of English Studies, Australian literary Studies Annual Bibliography, Australian National Bibliography, Journal of Commonwealth literature Annual Bibliography, Arts and Humanities Citation Index, Current Contents/Arts & Humanities, The Genuine Article and Modern Language Association of America Bibliography. Two Westerly Indexes, 1956-77 and 1978-83, are available at $8.00 from the above address. WESTERLY, No.2, JUNE, 1988 3 .. ELI ZABETH JOLLEY Images of Western Australia Easter Moon Easter Lily 26 November 1959. I do wish the children would stop screeching and fighting. They are much too hot of course and both refuse to give up their corduroy for the nice new cotton shorts and tops. We have been in Western Australia almost a fortnight. The people on the ship were right about the bath water going out anti clockwise but wrong, as far as I know, about screw top jars for stockings and under clothes. Certainly there are ants everywhere but not in our clothes. White ants have been eating the kitchen door post and the wood exposed looks like corrugated cardboard. I thought at first it must be a particular kind of Australian wood. The other evening at a party a guest, a woman lifted up my skirt. She wanted to know, she said, whether the pattern went right through. Was it real embroidery or not. I felt dreadfully shy and awkward, twice as tall as anyone else in the room! Very new in another country but also having only recently come out of a different world which has nothing to do with leaving Britain. I feel shy because of those years 1 have just been through, shut away in the kitchen, the nursery, the playroom and the seclusion of the locked railings of the Queen Street Gardens. For a long time I have been only in the company of prams and push chairs and little legs buttoned into leather gaiters and the jingling bells on that useful harness which tethers the parent to the child. I realise I am not used to talking about clothes at parties. The pattern is only pressed onto the material, it s not some interesting hand embroidery from Hungary or Tibet. The woman, 1 didn't hear her name, blushed. 1 think it was with the exertion of bending down, not because she felt she had been impolite. Because she was small 1 could see her blush spreading down her neck and down the front ofher dress. 1 don't think I have ever seen the full extent ofa blush before. It feels like being in a foreign country to come here. It is the brightness of all the colours and the very clear blue sky. There is no smoke. The light is so bright and the sun is out all the time and this makes our clothes seem dreadfully shabby. I have thrown our Burberry raincoats away. The dustbin people did not take them atfirst because they were not in the bin, only rolled up on top. I want to write about the trees with their clouds of blue flowers, as the flowers fall they look as if they are growing in the grass as well. On the street lawns there are gnarled little trees with long fragrant leaves. These make pools of shade. Going to the shops we went from one pool to the next. The trees remind me of dolls. People have their letter boxes by the footpath. Mostly tins on posts and you can see people wandering across their gardens to fetch their letters. Barefoot is nice. Especially where there is a water sprinkler. 1 did not know the feet could be so receptive. Leaves and grass. All the women here seem to have well shaped sun tanned legs. English legs seem ugly in comparison. The children here have brown legs and square cut sunbleached WESTERLY, No.2, JUNE, 1988 5 hair and a kind ofvacant expression which I suppose comes from being in the water, the sea or the river, for long stretches and perhaps it is the thick coating on the forehead and the nose of a white zinc cream ointment.