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School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts The Dissenter and Anti-authoritarian Aspects of Australian History and Character that Inform the Moral Ambiguity that Marks Australian Crime Fiction Robert James Schofield This thesis is presented for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy of Curtin University November 2017 DECLARATION To the best of my knowledge and belief this thesis contains no material previously published by any other person except where due acknowledgment has been made. This thesis contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university. 2 CONTENTS DECLARATION 2 ABSTRACT 4 THE GRASS MUD HORSE: A NOVEL 7 Exegesis: The dissenter and anti-authoritarian aspects of Australian history and character that inform the moral ambiguity that marks Australian crime fiction 314 Chapter 1: Introduction 314 Chapter 2: Towards a definition of Noir 324 Chapter 3: Robbery Under Arms by Rolfe Boldrewood 334 Chapter 4: The Forger’s wife by John Lang 366 Chapter 5: Mark Brown’s wife by Charles de Boos 375 Chapter 6: Irralie’s Bushranger by E.W. Hornung 383 Chapter 7: Wanted by the Police by Henry Lawson 393 Chapter 8: Summary and Conclusion 401 References 405 END 409 3 ABSTRACT This thesis consists of two distinct but related parts: a creative component, the novel ‘The Grass Mud Horse’, and an exegesis. Both will attempt to answer the question: How has the moral ambiguity that marks both colonial and contemporary Australian crime fiction been informed and influenced by the dissenter and anti- authoritarian aspects of Australian history and character? Crime fiction has a long tradition in Australian culture, ensured by its Western origins as a penal colony. Australia’s convict heritage, and the wave of working-class migrants during the Gold Rush, both led to a purported national character suspicious of authority, and lent its crime fiction a distinct voice, such that the forces of law and order were commonly seen as agents of repression, in a nation without a Bill of Rights or any constitutional protection of civil liberties. This resulted in early colonial Australian crime fiction differing significantly from other crime fiction in the Anglosphere, in that much like the seasons in the southern hemisphere, the moral sensibilities of Australian crime fiction were inverted. The novel ‘The Grass Mud Horse’ is a crime thriller set in present-day Perth. It is the third part of a trilogy, the first two novels of which have already been published: ‘Heist’ was published by Allen & Unwin in July 2013, and was followed by ‘Marble Bar’, published in July 2014. Each novel is contemporary crime fiction set in Western Australia, and features the same protagonists: Gareth Ford, an engineer framed as the inside man on a bullion robbery at the gold mine where he works, and Rose Kavanagh, a detective with the Gold Stealing Detection Unit, who helps Ford when she finds herself shut out of the investigation by corrupt police officers. The first two novels were partially set in outback Western Australia, a more lawless domain, and also echo the themes discussed in the exegesis. 4 ‘The Grass Mud Horse’ is a sequel to those books, but is an independent story able to stand alone without the reader having necessarily read the first two books. The novel is loosely based on recent events, notably the relationship between the Packer family and the Ho family of Macau, and their long struggle to procure a second casino licence in Sydney. The Ho family have been split by internal squabbles as the former wives of aging patriarch Stanley Ho try to install their children in key positions within the family companies. The novel aims to capture Perth society as China becomes Australia’s biggest trading partner, and address media anxieties of Chinese investment in property and minerals resources, and the resulting irony whereby the mining companies dig up Australia and sell it to the Chinese, and then the casinos try to win it back from visiting ‘high rollers’. The novel uses the conventions of noir fiction, characterised by cynicism, fatalism and moral ambiguity, to portray instances of corruption within Australia’s liberal democracy and compare it to corruption within the People’s Republic of China. The exegesis does not directly address the content of the novel, but discusses the development of the cynicism, fatalism and moral ambiguity prominent in ‘The Grass Mud Horse’. Although contemporary Australian crime fiction is heavily influenced by British and American crime fiction of the twentieth century, this thesis explores how many of the roots of contemporary Australian crime fiction run much deeper, and connect to ideas of Australian national identity and character forged in the colonial era. It examines how the moral ambiguity usually associated with noir fiction of the twentieth century was present much earlier in Australian crime fiction. If the ‘psychological reason for the weakening of the detective story in recent years is a weakening of the sense of sin’ (Symons, 1993), then the result is that British and 5 American crime fiction has moved closer to the moral ambiguity already well- established in the Australian canon. 6 THE GRASS MUD HORSE: A NOVEL 1. ‘It’s like a stage set,’ said Kavanagh, looking across the broad sweep of water at the city lights on the far side of the river. ‘It doesn’t seem to have any depth from here. Like it’s cut out of a plywood sheet.’ The water was flat and calm, no wind to ripple its surface, and the city skyline was reflected in it, a perfect mirror image. Hackett handed her a cardboard cup of gas-station coffee and sat down next to her on the hood of the car. She felt the suspension of the police cruiser dip under his weight. ‘I always feel that if a big wind came up off the ocean, the city might blow over,’ she said. ‘Just fall flat. Slap onto the water and float away downriver.’ She held the scalding coffee by the rim of the cup and let the steam lift the smell of it to her nose. She knew he was watching her but she didn’t want to look at him. She kept staring at the cluster of high-rise office blocks that made up the Perth city centre, laid out along the low ridge opposite, a serrated silhouette against a clear night sky. Despite all the lights in the office buildings, there was little sign of life in the city. A few cars moved along Riverside Drive and there was a procession of freeway traffic crossing the Narrows Bridge, but too far away to be heard. From where they sat on the South Perth foreshore the city was completely silent. The police radio in the car crackled to life, and Kavanagh tilted her head to listen, but it only spat out a squawk of static before it went dead and the silence returned. 7 She turned towards Hackett, confident now that he was enjoying the view of the river. She tried not to look at him except when he was unaware of it. His good looks annoyed her. He was tall, and she preferred men who were taller than her, of the same athletic build. She liked his broad shoulders and his strong jaw, but hated the way that he knew it. He was nearly ten years younger, but sometimes she felt he was from an entirely different time and place. Somewhere along the line it had become acceptable for men to spend as much time on their appearance as women. She had hoped that equality with male officers would be reached when she was judged solely on her work, rather than her looks, but somehow the opposite had happened, and the men had started spending more time in front of the mirror. She looked at Hackett’s hair, shining under the street lamps, and wondered what kind of product he used in it. She put her cup down on the hood of the car, took off her cap, and ran her hand across her scalp. She had cut it short again, and kept it bleached white, so much less trouble under the cap. It stood up on end now, held upright by sweat. It was three in the morning, but the air was warm and humid, still above twenty degrees. She climbed down off the car and stretched her back, then adjusted her belt. The equipment hanging off it seemed to have doubled in the seven years she had been in plain clothes. After a long shift the weight of the gun, radio, baton, cuffs, Taser and pepper spray left her back stiff and her hips sore. She tugged at her yellow reflective vest, feeling herself sweating under the nylon, and lifted her arms to let the air circulate under them. ‘We don’t need to wear the hi-viz,’ said Hackett, smiling at her over the rim of his coffee cup. ‘Not while we’re in the car.’ She thought about taking it off, but if she started there she’d soon end up ditching the belt too. She looked down at her shapeless blue cargo pants and combat boots, and 8 thought about her father in his khaki police uniform, his eyes always hidden in the shade of his broad-brimmed hat. She fidgeted with the baseball cap in her hands, her fingers following the checkerboard pattern around the crown, then fitted it back on her head and sighed. ‘We look like street sweepers,’ she said. Hackett laughed. ‘Isn’t that what we are?’ he said.