1959
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contents no. 1, 1959
STORIES
CUTTING PLUG Max Brown 3 THE LIE A. E. Sturges 16
POETRY ONCE I RODE \\'irH CLANCY ... Dorothy Hewett 2 THE CATS Francis King 7 As YOUNG AS I WAS Griffith Watkins 15 I PITY THE VIRGIN PHYLLIS John O'Brien 1.5 FROM THE LOVE SONGS OF WILLIAM Ross translated by Hugh Laing 19 "RALLAD" John O'Brien 19
ARTICLES THE BIG LEAP FORWARD Dymphna Cusack 5 THE STAMP OF GREATNESS Jeana Bradley S 100 YEARS OF DARWINISM N. H. Brittan 11 U'YBURN Katharine Susannah Prichard 14
NOTES 20
REVIEWS PENGUIN ROOK OF AUSTRALIAN VERSE Alec King 22 SEVEN EMUS (Herbert) Peter Abotomey 23 ANTIPODES IN SHOES (Button) David Bradley 24 SPAN David Hutchison 26 VERSE IN AUSTRALIA, 1958 Gaye Tennent 27
ARTISTS Judith Charsley (cover), John Wilson, Cedric Baxter
BUSINESS MANAGER Diana Robinson
EDITOR Bruce Lawson
WESTERLY 1 once I rode with Clancy...
NCE I rode with Clancy through the wet hills of Wickcpin, O By Kunjin and Corrigin with moonlight on the roofs. And the iron shone faint and ghostly on the lonely moonlit siding And the salt earth ranfi like crystal underneath our flying hoofs. # « # O once I rode with Clancy when my white flesh was tender, And my hair a golden cloud along the wind. Among the hills of ^^'ickepin, the dry salt plains of Corrigin, Where all my Quaker forbears strove and sinned. # « # Their black hats- \\'ent bobbing through the Kunjin churchyard, With great rapacious noses, sombre-eyed, Ringbarked gums and planted pine trees, built a raw church In a clearing, made it consecrated ground because tliey died. » * * From this seed I spring—the dour, sardonic Quaker men, The women with hooked noses, baking bread. Breeding, hymning, sowing, fencing off the stony earth, That salts tlieir bones for thanksgiving when they're dead. # # » It's a country full of old men, with thumbscrews on their hunger. Their crosses leaning sideways in the scrub. My cousins spit to wind\\ard, great noses blue with moonlight. Their shoulders propping up the Kunjin pub.
ONCE I rode with Clancy through the wet hills of Wickepin, O By Kunjin and Corrigin with moonlight on the roofs. And the iron shone faint and ghostly on the lonely, moonlit siding And the salt earth rang like crystal underneath our flying hoofs.
.\nd the old men rose muttering and cursed us from the graveyard Mlien they saw our wild white hoofs go flashing b>'. For I rode with landless Clancy and their prayers were at my back, They could shout out strings of curses on the sky. # # The old men clack and mutter and their dead eyes run with rain. I hear the crack of doom across the scrub. For though I ride with Clancy there is much of me remains. In the moonlit dust outside the Kunjin pub. # * « My golden hair has faded, my tender flesh is dark, -My voice has learned a; wet and windy sigh And I lean above the creekbed, catch my breath upon a ghost. With a great rapacious nose and sombre e>e. DOHOIHY HEWETT: for biographical detail see Xotes. 2 WESTERLY cutting plug b y M a X B r o w n HE REV. JOHN FERGUSON, the full What's he got his eye on me for this time? mature six foot of him, dimbed into the thought Davie as his father settled in at his T sulky. Then young Davie Ferguson flip side. The old beggar's always got his eye on ped the reins on Nigger's flanks and the somebody. Even in church when he's pray brown mare, neat and 17 hands, broke into ing, he's seeing who's looking and who's not, a smart trot. and what kids is up to mischief. By Jingo, he can wallop with that new riding crop he's MAX BROWN i.s a short story writer nnd novelist at i)i'esent got behind the pantry door. Out of the working on the literary staff of the West Australian, the corner of his eye, Davie could see his father Perth daily morning newspaper. Two of his books are Australian Son and Wild Turkey. searching, his coat pockets. First he tried the WESTERLY right, tlien the left. He wants his pipe, Tell him a lie? Tell him he didn't have thought Davie. a pipe when ten to one the old man knew His father searched his trouser pockets, lie had and the pipe and half a plug of Vic then slapped both coat pockets loudly. What tory were bloody-near burning a hole in his now? thought Davie. He'll be telling me to pants pocket? Davie remembered the crop turn back and well never get to Guildford. and shuddered again at the memory of the lash of it and the power of his father's big At last, John Ferguson spoke while Davie lean Presbyterian body. looked up at his stern l:)ulk. The old man's e\'e was a trifle too bright for his liking. He coughed and took the reins in his left hand and fished in his pocket with his right. Well Davie, bless my very soid if I haven't And let me have the use of your tobacco left my pipe on the dresser. Lend me yours tohile you are at it. so I can enjoy the ride this fine spring morn ing. So he knew he had tobacco too. As Davie reached deeper in his pocket, the sulky Young Davie drojaped his eyes and swal drummed onto the timber of the river bridge lowed. Now how did the old geezer know and the clip-clop from Nigger's hooves rattled he had a pipe? Somebody had snitched on against the green sides of the gully and a him; somebody must have seen him and magpie carolled among the yellow wattles. Charlie Fisher. They had been smoking pretty solid for a week now and smoking Davie looked in his father's face as the real stuff too. And somebody must have straight as he could and handed up a small snitched. clay pipe with broken stem and his plug with its little plate of tin, stamped Victory. One day he would leave home for that look in his father's eye. Thank you nv son. What a convenience ;T COAST to have in the family a young whipper- snapper who imagines himself a grown nmn. At that, John Ferguson's big hand closed A West Australian anthology on the pipe and the plug, his big arm made selected by an imperial gesture towards the ranges and H. Drake-Brockman the pipe arched through the spring air and hit the water of the Helena River with Stories by writers from the West, including scarcely a splash. such famous names as Murdoch, Prichard, Then John Ferguson slipped his hand into Casey, as well as monj' notable younger writers. his coat picket and fished out his browned A most interesting, indeed an impressive meerschaum pipe and placed it in his mouth collection. (The West Australian.) to hold between his strong teeth with quiet satisfaction. Then John Ferguson fished in his trouser AT ALL BOOKSELLERS pocket and pulled out a horn-handled knife and opened the blade with the strong nail of his right thumb. Published by This done, he looked straight ahead along Angus and Robertson Ltd., Sydney. his earthly path. He didn't have to watch when he was cutting plug. WESTERLY China today the big leap forward dare walk at night; Plongkong with its "beware of by Dymphna Cusack pickpockets" notices, its touts, its pimps, its pros titutes in every doorway, its beggars on every foot path; its Chinese with faces closed against us. While here, we were the subject of a welcoming curiosity. Peking—surrounded by drought-stricken country HE moment I stepped back on Chinese soil after —was leajiing as fast as anywhere else. Everywhere si\ months in Australia, I knew that something you saw the symbol: sometimes it was a horse strid T extraordinary was in the air. ing proudly across the clouds; sometimes a dragon '"So you've some back to see our Da Yueh Jin," breasting the waves. Every wall in Peking and the they said to me at the border. I hastily translated surrounding countryside overniglit it seemed bloss the words in my mind, for it was a phrase I hadn't omed in colour and life. heard before. Big Leap Forward—what did it Propaganda? Yes. Slogans? Yes. Just as our mean? posters and newspaper editorials in wartime are In the train to Canton I saw the characters for slogans and propaganda, but there's a closer relation it on the walls of white-washed farm-houses. The ship than that, for what has happened in China in train radio i^layed—too loudly and too often—a new peacetime is the kind of emotional upsurge we in the song on the theme. West know only in time of war. An English-speaking friend met me at Canton, "More, faster, better, more economically," is the his young face alight with more than welcome. In general Hne. But you can't make 650,000,000 the first five minutes I complimented him on the people do this—which they are doing in every field improvement in his Enghsh. "That's MY big leap of activity, every day, everywhere—unless they forward," he explained, "ten new words a day." want to. I had visited Canton, the poorest of China's China's slogans which sum up its national policy coastal cities, two years before and seen its back have released human potential this year in a way streets and the life on the sampans. Its standard never before known. As the correspondent for the of living was low. It had an air of straining to London Daily Express said when he was here in the catch up. spring: "Here are people iJushing forward to social But now! This wasn't Canton as I knew it at ism with enthusiasm." all. It was leaping forward with a speed and en In 1958 China nearly doubled its grain output thusiasm I would have thought impossible. The and surpassed the U.S.A. wheat and cotton ouput. sami^an-dwelling river folk had been reduced from They've built dams where no dams have ever about 300,000 at liberation to about 50,000. Tlie been. I went to watch the Ming Tombs Reservoir city had a sparkle, an air of cleanliness. in construction because two of my woman friends I went walking late in the mild spring evening had volunteered for work there—one formerly a along the river-quays and compared them in my translator at Unesco, the other the daughter of a mind witli Hongkong, where no foreigner would Chinese diplomat. Work they did. Hard work, sleeping on palliasses in tents, something previously DYMPHNA CUSACK is a well-known Australian writer who unknown to the Chinese intellectual. All Peking spent 18 months in China from June, 19.56, and another six had volunteered to go. Everyone under the age of months hefore leaving for England in November of last year. 45 (and a lot over it) boasted their suntan and their It was during her second visit that this article was written. She has published a book on China, Chinese Women Speak. muscles. WESTERLY An old freimi oi mine, toothless, bowed, slipped aside his shirt to let nic feel the ridges of muscled llesli with wliicli tiic pole branded him. He began carrying it at eigiit. All over the counti>, in city and village, they're making steel. Everyone is making it. You go out to aftornooji tci and xour hostess has beeu out with the street committee helping to make steel. Her 12- \ear-old daughter comes home and gives an exciting report on what the scliool furnace turned out that day. When the campaign started in December the output of steel rose 165 per cent, and of iron 1,020 per cent. It is estimated that China's steel output will surp;iss Britain's in 19.59. At a newly-formed commune, about a seven- jiour train ride into the country from Peking, I saw for the first time a completely socialist community organised through the amalgamation of a number of Dymphna Cusack with Teng Ying-chao, the wife of co-operatives that eight years ago were famine- the Chinese Premier, Chou En-lai. ridden villages. It had kindergartens, an old people's home, a library, a house of culture, opera groups, primary schools, an agricultural university of tl^eir own founding, a vast area of village-built blast furnaces, an experimental farm and a bumper har vest. Tliere was a militia which sprang up over night when trouble started in the Taiwan Straits when Chiang Kai-shek started his daily warnings to the mainland over Taiwan Radio more loudly than usual. There aren't enough water-conservation experts Small groups, men and women, are drilling in in China to advise on all they've done so most of the fields, in the streets, in schools and factories all the time the peasants have had to think it out for over China. "We want peace," they say, "but we're themselves. In a year they've irrigated another not afraid of war." 80,000,000 acres, nearly half China's total irrigated In the cultural field, today's Peking entert linment area. notes give the choice of a dozen operas—including There are no hours they won't work. Down in Lady Precious Stream and Pearl Concubine, Lin Anwhei province they hang lanterns on the horns of Tse-hsu, who is revered in Chinese history because water-buffaloes so tliey can plough the paddy-fields over a century ago he had burned at Canton the by night. The Government put out a strong appeal opium shipped to China by British merchants. At saying: You MUST have eight hours sleep. Every the children's theatre there is Hans Anderson's The day during the harvest season, records were broken. Snow Queen. Four operas have been brought from Innumerable innovations have been introduced to the province of Shensi, a dozen or so modern docu amehorate the back-breaking work of yesterday. This mentary plays rising out of the Big Leap are also year it is planned to get rid of the carrying-pole, showing. They are rather naive and obvious some symbol of China's servitude. There's a song "Good of them, but I'd prefer them to the esoteric products riddance to the carrrying-pole" that goes; of the angry young men. Also there are Japanese, Buildings a thousand metres high ive Russian, Czech, German, English, French, Italian and bore on our shoulders Australian films. One drop of sweat for each brick. While I've been in China I've seen films fiom Sturdy young men you transformed into 32 countries and dance troupes as far apart as the hunchbacks. Ballet Rambert (with Pat Dyer as ballerina). Classi Carrying-pole, oh, carrying-pole. cal Japanese and Cambodian, in which the Prince WESTERLY and Princess danced the ritual roles. After China, any Western country will seem to me a cultural desert and don't forget I've Hved in most of the A yearly subscription to countries of Europe. I can in addition go to dozens of exhibitions—my favourite is that showing the re cent excavation of one of the Ming Tombs—and the annual chr\santhemimi show in Pei-hai Park (800 varieties). The Big Leap is hard going but the Chinese westerly don't fool themselves. One slogan says: "Three years of bitter struggle; ten thousand years of happiness." "Bitter struggle," scoffed an old peasant woman wliose lunch of steamed bread and sweet potato I is six shillings well spent. shared. "They don't know what bitter struggle means, these young ones. Now we all eat. Now we all have clothes to wear. Before we starved. Wc froze. Our (.-hildren died. The landlord beat my brother to death. I had to sell my daughter in WESTERLY is part of the Australian famine-time." It looks hard to me, but after all 1 belong to a race that made its first claim for an '" literary scene. It is an inde eight-hour day 100 years ago. pendent journal which every issue If you think all this is being done by force, you're publishes stories, poems, articles, re fooling yourself, unless you mean the force of the views, by well-known authors from human will and the fire of the human heart directed Australia and abroad. It also pub to building for itself. lishes the work of young new writers, especially West Australians. the cats \ YEAR'S subscription to Westerly •^ is a thoughtful and greatly ap preciated gift to give anyone interest Caesar stepped superb in scorn Of Pompey at his play; ed in what people are thinking and Two nolden cats that, blazonini; the lawn, writing in Australia today. Stotxl eml)lem to the da\'. Caesar, full in the svm, To get the next three issues of Fro/.e, one paw in the air; His leopard heart beat smoothly for the run -*• Westerly, post free, send 6/- (over To the mouse's lair. seas, 7/6) in stamps, postal notes, money order or cheque, together with name and address, tO: Pompey, anionic shadow. Yawned and saw the chase. Grinned, leapt sideways with an aimless blow, And licked an ecstatic piece. Westerly Now slanting svmlight twists the eye — c/- Arts Union They sleep where the grass is long. Stretched identical and dreaming, lie University of Western Australia The silly and the strong. Francis King. Nedlands, W. A. FRANCIS KING is a research student in the English depart ment at the University of Western Australia. WESTERLY Randolph Stow: the stamp of greatness by Jeana Bradley HERE is a story, slightly apocryphal perhaps, of RANDOLPH STOW v^/as born at Geraldton, a certain Oxford undergraduate who, on present Western Australia, in November, 1935. He is T ing himself for a viva, was solemnly capped by an arts graduate from the University or W.A. his examiners who said: "We refu.se to examine a and at present is a patrol officer in New Guinea. greater philosopher than ourselves." He has published three novels and a book of verse, Act One. His third novel, To the Islands, It is rarely given to teachers to meet a student won the 1958 Miles Franklin Award of £500 who has the instantly recognizable quality of real and the Australian Book Fair Award for the {.reatness, but I think more than one of his tutors best Australian book of the year. Act One was awarded the Australian Literature Society Award felt that about Randolph Stow. In fact it was a for the best volume of poems written by an little embarrassing at times. We had a sneaking Australian and published during 1957. feeling that he was being kind to us. But this is a personal reminiscence and has little to do with critical appreciation of a writer who has the obvious trimmings of kookaburras, gumtrees, and been called, by so blase a critic as John Davenport all. of The Observer, a genius. When I heard: "Mick has written a novel," my Genius. . . . Major Poet. . . . these are big words heart sank. In his short plays, I admired the facility to apply to someone barely out of his 'teens and I with which he could reproduce the style of Sartre or feel that we in Western Australia should have a Fry; in his verse there was fragile charm; his essays measure of pride in his success. We can remember on the Elizabethan dramatists showed a remarkable tlie delicately sardonic play Gothlight, which was range and depth of interest and reading. But now, produced for a meeting of Convocation, his revue I thought, would his novel be "How-I-suffered-at- sketches, some macabre, some wittily malicious, and sehool-with-my-first-experience-of-life," or "Drought- remember that these were done for the university. death-and-destruction-in-the-mulga," or "Communist- And there was his work in the drama section of the worker-against-capitalist-boss," or any of the varia Australian Broadcasting Commission and the fragile tions which could be expected from a 20-year-old? charm of the Amaranth cycle of poems, set to music And what came was A Haunted Land. and t.iken ultimately for a British Broadcasting Cor It is derivative, yes—from Emily Bronte, from poration broadcast, but written originally for home Webster, from Chaucer, from Tourneur. Why not? t(m,smnption. In .short, Randolph Stow was very These are great models. The greatest living English iuuch part of our life in an entertaining, im.spectacu- poet deliberately uses the echoes of older writers lir way—and then his first novel was published. . . . to give weight to his own verse. If Patrick Maguire At this point, I must confess that I am biassed, and Elizabeth are descended from Heathcliff and because his work has for me a quality that I have Katherine Linton, so "The Game of Chess" in The missed in much Australian writing. As a new people, Wasteland depends for some of its power on Enobar- with a derivative and in many ways an alien culture, bus's speech from Anthony and Cleopatra. we have, for the last .50 years, been absorbed to the point of obsession with establishing ourselves as Perliaps a critic may say: "This is too violent, too "Australian". Last Century our writers were content horrific, too morbid," but I was born and brought to be strangers in a strange land, noting with interest up in- just such a country and while I cannot answer the kangaroo and the picturesque bushranger, with for the actual details, I can quite easily accept them and some at least I know to be true. JEANA BRADLEY is a membei of the teaching staff of the The same critic may say that, as in the ease of EngUsh department at the University of Western Australia. Zola, the single experience does not add up to a WESTERLY picture of life in the reafistic tradition as it is Uved over the three score years and ten of the biblical figure. But surely all literature must be selective and if a novefist chooses to select with a poetic bias, to highlight the greatest moments of truth and present us not merely a documentary but an interpretation, who are we to cavil? This i:)assage, I think, is the sort of poetic inter pretation which is superb. Anne has just picked up a fox cub and is defying the vixen. And Anne was conscious suddenly of the immense and i^rimitive tragedy of which she was the villain, and hugging the cub closer to her cried to the vixen: "1 have him. Take him from me if you can.' For a moment she longed to see the red-brown body gather itself into a spring, to feel the onrush of the vixen and the tearing claws and the fine, sharp teeth gash ing her flesh in hatred that came from love. For a moment she was deep iti the violence of nature, and the fox was all passion and fury that had ever been in the earth, the judge, the destroyer, the lover, the god, fierce and cruel and selfless and all made of love. And she mocked the vixen: "Take him and punish me, if you can!" and waited for the attack, and he cub tjegan to struggle and she held it tightly and angrily, watching the fox eyes still. Beside the fury that was there her selfless love for Patrick became petty and ignoble and nothing was important in the world but that she should be initiated, through pain, into the greatness that lay behind those flaring, desperate eyes. And then she saw that she had no part in this sheep and that dead grass as far back as I can re greatness and that the fox would never hurt her while member and that same miracle of delicately coloured she had the cub in her arms, and her defiance burned spring. Anyone who can put these things down in away and died in rejection and despair. She bent dow n and placed the cub gently on the ground.1 cold print and evoke the half-submerged experience has given his country an offering of infinite courage Again, a critic may say this is in the style of D. and love, because it takes love and courage to express H. Lawrence. True. But I think in addition that one's own feelings so clearly. no-one since D. II. Lawrence has so closely under stood and interpreted the terror and the beauty of His people, too, grow out of the landscape, and the Australian scene. There is no need for the so if they are not "real" in the sense of Sydney back- Kookaburra and the gumtree when we get: streets and Social Problems, they are real in their own dramatic context—which is superficially an Aus At this tail-end of summer the landscape looked as she had always remembered it, brown and sere, the tralian scene. The Maguires of The Bystander and sloping paddocks, where grey sheep stood motioness in A Haunted Land and the nurse of To the Islands are the dead grass, traversed with red dry creekbeds. the strangers from Ireland or Latvia or Lilliput put Treeless, wide and empty the land stretched out under into a land too fierce for them to accept. They fight the sun, and the hills too were bare. A flock of white cockatoos which orse screaming from the ground as it and succumb or reject, according to temper. the car passed was the only sound and motiort in that Jessie, Nakala, Heriot, accept and have a stoic land.2 pride and resignation sometimes quite unrecognised Spring came gently on the counti-y, filling the air with pollen and the paddocks with a golden light. by themselves. They will die in some outback town, Scrub wattle burst into soft yellow bloom, stretches with two pubs and a store, and be buried in the hot of fallow became a sea of capeweed flowers. Great earth, marked by a desultory cross whose wood will drifts of pink evtrlastings sprang up and rustled like bleach and burn under Australian summers .... so thin paper in the cold spring wind, and a palec, more delicate pink showed on the hills when the heath real these people seem to me. flowered.3 Of the three novels, I like best A Haunted Land These things are alive to me. I have known those —violent and immature perhaps, but the most com pletely poetic in conception and execution. In The 1. A Haunted Land, pages 181 and 182. 2. The Bystander, page 50. Bystander, Stow (always humble in the best sense 3. Th;^ By.stander, page 183. of the word) seems to have been influenced by de- WESTERLY mands for reahty and p.sychologieal study and as a We listened to this and that and then Ciune Meta result some of the force has been harnessed and re morphosis and it was given the rarest tribute an strained. The figures of The Bystander are smaller audience could give—rapt silence. I can do no more than those of A Haunted Land, though they may be tlian let it speak for itself: more like the people one meets in Hay Street. But Listen, how can he knoiv? It is tempting to compare the Listen. odd wisdom of the young Keats and there is an un 1 was once :i man. easy feeling that this is all too near the bone. M\ face was harsh as l^ark, my smile was rare. Scarred with the sun I was to an earths ti'.n In To the Islands, his latest book, published in And grey as rained-on stubble was my hair. Australia this year, 1 find a curious lack of connec e o o tion—although John Davenport found it a work of And 1 was old and proud as the only tree genius. The first part, I felt, was too crowded with Left standing in a field, unawed by ploughs. And 1 would see myself contentedly unidentified characters, rather like a Russian novel, Proud of my hardwood heart, my arms like boughs. but the Ltter part—Heriot's journey—is comparable o « » with the Pilgrim's Progress as a great symbolic jour But envious gods, the punishers of pride. ney of the human soul. He shows two qualities of Came on me in my sleep. I woke to see greatness—wisdom (not knowledge, which is quite Myself transmuted. By a dark creek's side Within a thicket, 1 bec:une a tree. another thing and can be painstakingly picked up) 0 o e and compassion. Festooned with clematis and old man's beard. And now for a last glance at his poetry (for he Angry with wrangling birds, you have seen me seems—to the great loss of Australian theatre—to Preside ovej' a black pool where a lu'ig Goes round, around, circling perpetually, liave abandoned drama). Of the Amaranth cycle. « s « Stow himself said they were not much—and bore Where wintry mornings clothe my feet with mist spoke the self critic and not the man of mock And sunrise sets the dew-bright grass to glisten humility. They were juvenilia and no more. And nothing can be heard but silence. Nothing can be heard but nothing. But in the last Festival of Perth, the Adult Edu Listen, cation Board sponsored readings of Australian poets. Listen. STUDENTS' for all your STATIONERY Requirements consult . . . CARROLL'S PTY. LTD. 566 HAY STREET —PERTH 23 1017 We also carry slocks of Greeting and Invitation >f Cards for all occasions 10 WESTERLY 100 years of Darwinism by N. H. Brittan The)' contain fairly extensive evidence he had col In 1859, the English naturalist, Charles lected, together with his theory and the possible Darwin, published the Origin of Species— objections to it. the result of over 20 years' deliberations on the relations betv\/een living organisms. Darwin was not the first man to postulate evo lution, why then, does his work constitute such a landmark? What have been described by Fothergill- as the "early period" and the "speculative period" ARIOUS catch-phrases have been used to des cover up to 1790—the Greek philosophers and later cribe Darwinism—as the theory of evolution by the start of the classification of organisms on the basis V natural selection came to be called—including of external form. The period from 1790 to 1900 "struggle for existence" and "survival of the fittest". Fothergill has termed the "formative period"—the The scientific public had been introduced to these start of the first theories of evolution, of which may ideas a year before in a paper read to the Linnaean be mentioned that due to the French zoologist, Society of London on July 1, titled: On the tendency Lamarck. of species to form varieties; and in the perpetuation Lamark's theory is that individuals pass on char of varieties and species by means of natural selection. acters drey have themselves acquired and also that It was a joint paper, one author being Darwin use of a part of an organism strengthens and develops and the oUier Alfred Bussel Wallace. Although the it while disuse brings about decrease and finally centenary which we celebrate this year is that of atrophy. Darwin's Origin of Species, it should not be for As for the book itself, many an author of fiction gotten that to Wallace belongs an equal share in the would be gratified if his brainchild were to suffer launching of the principle of evolution by natural a similar fate to that or the Origin—the first edition selection. This is another instance of the simultane sold out on the day of publication. Not only this, ous discovery of a law of nature by individual scien but it set off such a series of explosions tliat it must tists without knowledge of the other. Ironically, have been one of the most talked-of books at tliat Wallace sent his manuscript to Darwin and it was time. only through the efforts of two odier scientists that The discussion stemmed not only from the scien the contribution from Darwin was included and the tists, contesting whether the evidence was adequate joint paper published. Darwin's idea had been to lor the theory, but also from the church, or at least allow the paper by Wallace to be presented alone. tx^rtain members of it, contesting the mechanistic The evidence on which the theory was based views the work was thought to convey. However, had been culled from different sources by the two had this been all the Origin achieved in 1958, it is authors; Darwin's mainly from domesticated animals doubtful whether the thoughts of biological scientists and Wallace's from natural populations of animals in in various parts of the world would have turned the East Indies. towards Darwin at this time. The Origin had been planned by Darwin for some time. Sketches, dated 1842 and 1844, were to be published by his wife in the event of his death. ^ ANE of the main ellects of the book was that it ^ issued a challenge to its opponents and its sup 1. Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace: Evolution by porters. At that time there was not the highly Natural Selection. Cambridge University Press, Cam documented and highly factual state of affairs exist- bridge, 1958. DR. BRITTAN is senior lecturer in botany at the University 2. Philip G. Fothergill: Historical Aspects of Organic Evo of Western Australia. lution. HoUis and Carter, London, 1952. WESTERLY 11 ing in some sciences today, so tlrere was a move to tin—represented the part of the nucleus concerned rectify this lack of facts about evolution. \^•ith heredity. Saint George Mivart-', in particular, attacked tlie In 1895, Weissman postulated that unless the theory of evolution's materialistic outlook and tlie environment affected what he termed the germ plasm implied denial of an> special creation of species. the acquired characters could not be inherited. Also he had a number of objections based on such Using the germ plasm idea, the Lamarckians postu tilings as the absence in the then-known fossil record lated diat the body or soma must be able to affect of tlie intermediate stages in evolution and tlie possi the germ plasm. This difference of opinion resulted bility of sudden evolutionary changes instead of the in the two schools of thought about evolution, the series of small ones postulated by Darwin. Alto Darwinian and the Lamarckian. The emphasis in gether, he had a fist of eight. the latter was on he effect of environment in pro ducing inherited variations. In a sense, the objections are not directed against natural selection as an evolutionary force, but rather Darwin published the Descent of Man and Selec against Darwin's view that natural selection is the tion in Relation to Sex in 1871, which added to evolutionary force. The materiahstic objection comes natural selection the theory of sexual selection. Most from Darwin's point that natural selection is purely of the evidence for this is based on separation of metaphysical and is not to be taken as meaning an most animals and some plants into two sexes and independent power or deity. Mivart distinguishes their possession of secondary sexual characters, which between absolute and derivative creation. The for Darwin said could be subject to selection. This was mer requires the direct action of a creator and deriva based on the assumption that a metliod which tended tive creation the action through natural laws of a to increase the chances of mating between desirable divine purpose acting upon matter which has previ- parental forms would result in greater evolutionary otisly been absolutely created with a power to change advance. or evolve. In this work, Darwin also put forward tlie theory In spite of objections, it seems that in die early diat man's ancestors were related to those of the 1900's the vast majority of biologists accepted the apes. This, of course, rather more than his original theor>' of evolution. Fothergill only mentions one theory, brought conflict with those who had held to biologist of note who openly disavowed organic evo a strict interpretation of the Genesis story of creation. lution. Many caricatures were produced and probably be After publication of the Origin various workers, cause of this more recent book of Darwin's, tlie who did not accept in ioto DarAvin, collected evid teaching of evolution was banned in certain States ence to the contrary. of the United States of America. An example was Bateson', who did not agree that all the variation—the raw material upon which natu ral selection was to operate—must be small. He \ S already mentioned, Lamarck preceded Darwin in gathered many examples where the variation occurred ^ producing a theory of evolution, a theory which in a large jump, or what we now call a mutation. suffered eclipse for a variety of leasons, but which De Vries coupled this with his own observations on got renewed attention after publication of the Origin. the variation in the evening primrose and put for This was because certain scientists could not accept ward the mutation theory of evolution. the Darwinian view that natural selection was the Darwin had postulated that the variations were sole cause of organic evolution. Lamarckism had the all inherited, that is passed on to a variant's pro advantage for some tliat the mystical aspect could geny. Lamarck earlier had claimed the transmission be excluded. The theory was pretty well water of characters acquired during the lifetime of an in tight, once the premise was accepted that environ dividual to its progeny. This had been done at a ment could influence characteristics of living organ time when the constituent of the cell responsible isms and that such characteristics could be inherited. for character transmission had not been recognised. Just as Darwinism had started an investigation into Towards the end of the 19th Century, it had been the universality of small variations among living accepted that the body known as the nucleus was in things, so die rise of Lamarckism set off a period of all cells and that the stainable material—the chroma- investigation of the changes dtie to environment and the heritability of such changes. 3. Saint George Mivart: Genesis of Species, 1871. The approach has been made mostly using animals 4. Bateson: Materials for the Study of Variations. as diverse as saw flies, salamanders and rats. 12 WESTERLY Cliaracteristics used ha\e been a choice of larval food in the case of s.iwHies, the inheritance of colour david foulkes taylor clianges in the skin when li\ing on different coloured backgrounds in the c:isc of salamanders, and die ability to learn the way of escape from a tank, when 0^ the choice was between a lighted jiassage with an electric shock and a dim passage with no shock in die case of rats. .\icDougall'' continued the experiment with rats for 44 generations and published results which show 2i crawley avenue ed that the a\'era:4e error dropped from 68 to 9 to .35 f(;r the last six generations. He considered that [>i these Ksults showed that the learning was inherited and th.it the experiment was capable of Lamarckian explanation. c« One of the possible stumbling blocks in the originid Darwinian theory was the origin of the small variations to be selected and the way these were furniture including the celebrated passed on. The work of xMendel, aldiough carried out befcre 1865, was not discovered until 1900 and T AY L O R M A D E poona cnulr clcarK' (ienionstrated the way characters were in herited and showed that this occurred in an accurate custom and hand-printed furnishing mathematical way. His work laid the foundations of the science now known as genetics. Further work fabrics, plastics and bubble shades on both animals and plants has shown that variation exists in living organisms and is not only inherited and paper lantens, sea-grass matting but can be induced by various means such as X-rays and heat. It has also been shown that there is a low bamboo curtains. natural level of mutation which possibly can be re lated to cosmic and other radiation. \'ariation and the selection of variant types has paintings, sculpture, stoneware been shown in recent years with the increasing use of antibiotics and synthetic insecticides. The vari original prints, picture framing ance in the susceptibility of bacteria to antibiotics such as streptomycin shows in the development of lesistant varieties able to increase because of the killing of the more sensitive types. D.D.T. acts similarly when used against the house fly. There are \ariations in susceptibility to D.D.T. and the more resistant ones are selected by the use of the insec all are invited to visit the ticides and it is these which produce the new popu lation. crawley gallery/showrooms At present, the principle of evolution is, with few exceptions, generally accepted as the means by which change takes place in living things. There is much less agreement on how this evolution occurs and what 86 5055 die forces, if any, are which direct it. However, the investigations begun by the publication 100 years ago of the Origin shows the debt tlie bio logical sciences owe to Darwin. 5. WilUam McDougal: 1927, 1930, 1937; Rhine and McDougal, 1933. WESTERLY 13 "That blasted nag of yours won't let me get neal- him 1" I would take the halter, go out into the paddock, w yburn call Wyburn and after a little talking to an wheed ling, he'd come up to me and 1 would slip tlie halter over his head. It Ui.s always a triumphant moment when I an extract from the memoirs of handed him over to Jim and said: "There, you just don't know how to manage lum !" Katharine Susannah Prichard Before Ric could walk, Jim used to take him on the front of the saddle when he was riding along countr>' roads. With every confidence in my hus HEN we were married, Jim gave me a good- band's horsemanship, 1 was still terrified that my looking upstanding gelding. He was dark precious baby might be jolted and fall off tlie saddle. W bay widi a white blaze on his forehead. "The But it never happened and Ric grew up with the best-topped horse in Western Australia," one of the natural seat and horse-sense his father hoped he show judges remarked when he visited us at Green- would have. We had many happy days when we mount. It was to please me, no doubt, though I could all go riding through the hills together. wouldn't have minded whether my darling Wyburn Ric's first pony was a little devil of a Shetland was any sort of scrubber. Jim would have—he had stallion we called Moppingarra, an aboriginal name no time for an animal that was not well bred. for the .magic medicine jnan of a tribe. Moppin was I was never as good a horsewoman as I would almost black, with a shaggy mane tlirough which have liked, but Jim was a wonderful horseman: his bright eyes glittered wickedly. Such a small understood horses and had worked with them all his creature to be so full of impudence! Hfe. He cared for them as though they weie in But we all loved bun, and Ric handled him well. timate friends and taught me to handle Wyburn so It N\'as only when we weren't with him that he got that he knew me and would respond, ahnost to my into mischief. thought. One afternoon, after I had saddled Wyburn and The first horse Jim bought me was a lovely, Moppin, I hung their reins over a post of the long flighty mare we called Shubiddy. The days of side high gate, ready for a ride when Ric came from saddle were over and I wanted to ride Shubiddy school. Some men were working on the road, 100 astride. After years of journalism in London when yards or so away. Their heavy old draught horse I had no horse to ride, I wasn't prepared for the was a white mare in a cart nearby. Hearing squeals difference of saddles and seat. and roars of laughter, I ran out to see what was the Shubiddy sensed this and didn't like my per matter. Moppin had clambered over the gate, formance. Neither did Jim. He decided to try snapped his reins and was making-up to the old her out himself. After cavorting gaily about the mare. The men were enjoying the joke. I had to paddock, she> took a flying leap over the long barred retrieve Moppin. gate. So my honeymoon husband concluded he Jt was always iiappening. 1 A\'ould be peacefully could not trust her with me, or me with her. A at work in my writing room when the telephone more tractable mount had to be found. N\ould ring, and an irate voice exclaim: "Your stallion It was. Wyburn and I took to each other from IS interfering widi our mares. Please come and get our first meeting. It was really love at sight. When him at once." I had groomed, fed and ridden him for a while, he Jim ^\'as often away froui home when this hap would come to me when 1 called and stand patiently pened. I would have to put aside my writing and while I saddled him. Sometimes he wouldn't let lide miles to Middle Swan or Mount Helena, catch e\en Jim catch him. Moppin and bring him back to his stable. A ride On spring mornings, he raced round our hill in the morning was always pleasant, but wasted a paddocks, dirowing up liis heels as skittishly as a lot of time. two-year-old. Jim would chase after him until he Ric could not bear to part with Moppin, until was tired, then come to me cursing and saying: we persuaded him that Moppin was too small for a schoolboy. We promised to get him a bigger pony. K. S. PRICHARD: for biographical detail, see Notes. So Moppin was sold to a man with an ice-cream 14 WESTERLY cart, antl Jim bought a brumby irom a mob which ritle ^N yinui.. Oiice, when 1 was jway from home, used to come down to Jane Brook in summer time. Jim lent him to an Italian ex-cavalr>' officer v\lio let Brum was supposetl to be mouthed and broken him down and skinned his knees. Jim could scarcely wheu we got him, but he was too rough and wild face me afterwards. My poor Wyburn was never for my liking. 1 couldn't forgive him when he the same again, though he lived to a good old age. liropped at a creek and Ric got a nasty spill. Jim When 1 went to the goklfields for three months, wasn't satislied with him either, so we said good- I left him in the paddock he knew well with a creek bxe to Brum. running through it. He died there. 1 searched him Then Blue Lupin came to delight us all—though for hot fly before I went away, but probably the fly he was Ric's pon>'. He was champion pony hack had struck and killed him. ot the St:ite for one or two years, winning prizes at Ric and I were alone tlu;n, but we greived for the Royal Show. The whole family danced attend \\'yburn as part of the old happy life \vhen Jim was ance on iiiui for those appearances on the Show with US, Such good times we had together—round ground, brushing his bay pelt until it shone, black ing up cattle in the paddocks, driving them to the ening his liooves, polishing his bit, bridle and stirrups saleyards in Midland, riding through the bush on before each e\'ent when he v/ent into die ring. spring days when the wildflowers flimg patches of vivid coloiu- about us, or over to Rocky Pool for a HUT no horse ever came up to Wyburn in my eyes. dip at sunset on summer evenings. I used to sing and talk to him as we rocle along A blacksmith who said Jim owed him some back tracks through the hills. He seemed to know money took possession of m>- saddle. I never rode my mood and anticipated what 1 wanted to do widi ag.iin or wanted another horse. uncanny sympathy. Such a wise and cunning old moke! Sometimes, tired and discouraged after a day's as young as I was writing, I would saddle-up and go oft with him for an hour or two in the bush. He knew just where I * S young as I was, wanted to go when I felt Hke that—to the top of I remember so clearly the hills so I could look out over die long, lovely How the green fur valley of the Swan and Helena. Of the high, high hedge Gradually, my tiredness and depression would Would support my freckled liody; evaporate. I would begin to feel exhilarated, draw And how I would lie there some magnetism from Wyburn, and on the way And snick my infallible -wooden rifle home, when we struck a stretch of smooth earthen Through the shallow autumn afternoon road, away he would go and we'd race home in the At old ladies, best of spirits. \Mio, laden with groceries and sighs. Only about one tiling did we ever quarrel. Now Climbed the fondest of the hills and then I tried to reach some interesting wildflower In all my gleaming land. country beyond a sanitary dump. As soon as he GrifR,-;i Watkins caught a smell from the dump not a step further along that track would Wyburn go. I carried a whip, chiefly because Jim had given it to me, and it had a prett>' silver handle. Rarely did I touch I pity the virgin Phyllis Wyburn. I couldn't bear to hit him really hard, but no amount of gentle taps or turning him back would J PITY, the virgin Phv-flis, who grows old get him past that evil smell. He snorted, shied, * Unloved, childless and alone. swerved and pig-rooted whenever we argued about I despise the easy-thighed and Ijold going forward, and usually set off at a brisk pace in Cynthia—who all,men. own. the opposite direction. i* o * Jim said I was riuning the horse to let liim boss Phylfis. transfigures with love her cat; me like that, but I felt Wyliurn was entitled to his Cynthia has none left, even for that. primitive instincts and could not outrage them by John O'Brien forcing him. GRIFFITH WATKINS and JOHN O'BRIEN: For biographical I was very mean about allowing anybody else to details, see Notes. WESTERLY 15 cle ui through his brain. Thhe boslioss h:id pushed too lute. He was an unreliable sod." Claude didn't object to laughter; welcomed it, radicr—not as a comment on his veiaeity but as a the tribute to his prowess as a y^nii-teller. When we shopped luighing, Sam said: When were you m the Mallee, Claude? Sam was compiling a diary of dates, with the object of one day confronting Claude with the proof that he was 150 years old and had worked long enough to qualify for a double pen sion. lie "Depression," said Claude. What made you leave?—As I said, he was an mircliablc sod. Didn't know his own mind one hour to the next. But mauily it was because of the sand. Sand?—Yes, I put up with it in my eyes and ears, by A. E. Sturges swallowed it with my grub, scooped it from the dams and cleared it from die fences. But when after a particularly bad blow we couldn't find the house, I left the boss to dig it out and hit the track for Gippsland. What year was thai?—l 16 WESTERLY direction, parallel to the river. Without thought— crack. The Japs were still on our heels, but 1 was I was probably still under his influence—I followed determined to have a draw before I ran again. Ski him. The wind changed suddeiih, blowing now moved the lighter a\va\ a bit. I followed it with my straight at the river. The fire swept down on it, he id, but he kept withdrawing it. I was thinking boiled the surface—we would lia\e beeu cooked like what a hell of a time it was to play die fool wdieii era>'s—then was awa>' on the far side, leaving the he fell flat on his back, stone dead, with a hole in strip between me and the river a bed of smoking his face where his nose had been." ashes." The Japs catch you?—No. I knelt down and got Claude wiped Iiis face and neck, as if he felt a fight, dien dragged poor Sid a few yards off die again tlie heat of die fire, and said: "I've never since track. Seconds later, three Japs went past, chatter raised a hand against a snake." ing like monkeys. If there'd been two, I'd have let Charlie was the first to find his voice. Narrow 'em have it, but three was a bit risky. I lay there est squeak you've had, I suppose? imtil dark, then made my way back to camp. Claude Shook his head. It's far from certain You were lucky to find it.—It's a gift. Put me that I would have perished but for the snake. Run dow n anywhere and bfindfolded I can tell the points ning into him cost me precious seconds. But in the of die compass. war. ..." A valuable asset, Clem said drily. Ever put it You went closer than that?—Only a cigarette to the test? Apart from that time, I mean.—Yes. In saved me. Tassie once What year luould that be? asked Sam. A cigarette? The bullet hit your cigarette case? " '26. There was an osmiridium rush—sixty odd Claude shook his head. quid an ounce. Tough country, it was, and every "It was in New Guinea. Sid Murphy and I were thing had to be carried out. Four of us took it on out on a recce when the Japs spotted us. We ran —150 pound packs, straight up over the Tiger along a jungle track for an hour witliout a stop, then Range, no track, dense scrub, mud in the gullies pulled up and listened. Not a sound. We decided knee deep. Bread brought four bob a loaf and whisky to have a fag. Sid flicked on his lighter and held it wh ;t you asked for it." out to mc. As I bent over, I heard a whistle and a And you got lost?—First day out, Smithy lost the compass in a heavy mist. When I pointed the direc tion, diey said I was mad—if I'd followed them, we'd have hit Port Davy. I beat em by just walking off. They followed because they thought I'd perish. Perth's ONLY fully air conditioned restaurant But you couldn't get lost in Tassie? could you. You could .spit from coast to coast.—Claude gave a THI OiLLA MAI^TA forebearing smile. "Roughest country in the world. There's a tree called horizontal. Grows up six, ten, fifteen feet, bends over, touches ground, roots, Highly praised by interstate and overseas climbs, bends again. You'll be walking along on visitors for its fine food and service, excellent what you think's the ground and find yourself twelve music and reasonable prices. feet up in the air, on a platfonii of horizontal." NO DRINK SERVICE CHARGE . . . Clem took a long drink from his bifly, spat out some tea leaves and wiped his mouth. "That's ... NO COVER CHARGE better," he said. "Claude's yarns make me diirsty. Eating sand, cooked in a fire, chased by Japs in the Reservations and inquiries Day: 60 4646 jungle." Night: 23 2003 "Schooner of beer'd be better," said old Tom. "Not in the jungle," Claude said. "People get Private parties catered for the idea tliat beer's cooling and spirits are warming. That's not so in the tropics. " You know a bit about it, do you Claude?—Ought Original cocktail bar and coffee lounge on first to. Put in four years behind a bar. Yes? said Sam. What year would that her floor. "I always wanted to know," said Charlie quickly, ignoring Sam's furious glance as a date for his diary WESTERLY 17 ilieti l;eloic it was born, "what a horse's neck is. Gi.t him, 1 thought, trying to keep ni> face dead Perhaps ) ou could tell me, Claude, seeii;g as you've pan. It's hard to cheek on a snake in a fire, a biu-ied been in the game?' horse, a soldier sniped on a jungle track. But a "Sure, s.iid Claude. Charlie waited. Claude garden. . . . I'd like to see your garden, Claude, .sat silent. The be^^iuning of a smile of triumph i'hiise onions and ]Hirsnit>s. touched the corners of Charlie's niouth. He looked me straight in the eye. "Any time," Well, Claude, what h it? he s.iid. "Corner of Mitcliell and South Streets. "Part of a horse betwei-ii his ears and liis back." Caeam weatherboard place, green roof." We all laughed, barring Charlie and CLuicle. Luck was against Claude; next day was Saturilay. Charlie looked na.sty. "Bull —" he spat out. 1 went over early, before he'd have had time to pre "Good for die gardeu," Claude said evenly. pare. He was out in front mowing the lawn. • I saw a chance. You a gardener, Claude? I said. "Ah, there you are," he said, as if he'd been "In a small way." waiting for me. He led the way around the back, Got good soil?—For some things. it w:is a big block, twery square foot of it planted What's it best for?—Onioiis, parsnips, greens. out in \egetables. Without doubt it was the best W'on't grow carrots, but cmions conK; six inches heme garden I had seen. I looked along the .straight across and it's a job to pull the parsnips out. green rows of lettuce, cabbage, peas, onions, parsnips Heavy stuff, by the sound of it, I said. Claude and beet. I was aware of Claude watching me nodded. closely. With studied nonchalance I w.ilked closer Many pests?—Oh, aphis, snails, slugs. Don't iu-.d b'.-nt to part die foliage of the plants. 'There trouble me much, though; I keep the wcetls out w,-as not a weed to be .seen. so they can't get co\er." I straightened tip, turned back and hiokcd at What weeds do you hate?—None. I won't Claude. His eyes wavered away from mine, and tolerate 'em. alcove his cheekbone a faint blush slowly spread. None?—Not a one. It was as if I had caught him out in a lie. 18 WESTERIY from the love songs of William Ross HE ills of my worm-eaten soul From cynics who talk of my ills T No earthly elixir heals Little good-will >'0u will hear: To all my story is told 'A poet! Vain spinner of dreams! --the gold du.st is turned to lees. Unmanly, weak, insincere!" No' longer my eyes behold M>' iires from the face of tlie hills The glory you were to me Carved farms through the lumbering years. And hope from spired sun-cfiffs has flovMi Broke horses with muscle and wiU; To lowlands of autmnn leaves. I sang through sun.shine and tears. Tlie floodgates of bitterest tears Though beauty gay glances may fling. Our parting has opened wide Grief has no tributes to pay: And left me, slight runt with the steers. No welcome from violin strings. Of the pedigreed herd, despised. No laughter from children at play. 'Twere well if nature had reared No more on the high crags ring Me deaf, insensitive, blind. My footsteps on windy days. To beauty which biuiis and sears. To the plain my failing feet cling To tones which craze men's minds. —the plain of dead songsters' graves. translated from the Gaelic by Hugh Laing \\ ballad" NDER a sky hke sapphires cool "My long sword has carved me out U In morning set, there walked a fool. A lady fair, a castle stout. Out of a dawn that ruby glowed Her beauty and my fertile land In morning cold, a tall knight rode. To my strength in tribute stand," On a hill a castle strong Sang the knight in swelling pride. Unmoving heard their youthful song. "Where others walk, I ride." "My questing soul will ever ride Filling the aching night with moan, Where others walk. My songs abide. A love-sore poet walked .ilone; Sang the poet in his youth. A cuckold knight roared out his rage, "My lady fair is Blessed Trutli But was warm in his old age Antl in the hungry, raging storm In his massive castle strong My rich heart will keep me warm." Which, unmoving, heard this song. John O'Brien HUGH LAING lives in Pertb and bas a diploma in education from the University of Western Australia. WESTERLY 19 o t e s comparisons with Canada 50 years a writer * RECENT visitor to Western Australia has been K .•\rHARlNE SUSANNAH PRICHARD is possibly ^ R. E. Walters, professor of literature at the the greatest living woman novelist in Australia. University of British Columbia, who began an Aus She was born in 1883 and has now been publishing tralian toiu- in Perth with a public lecture on "A for 50 >'ears and is still a vital force in Australian Comparison Between Australian and Canadian Litera literature—especially Western Australia, where she ture." Professor Waiters is in Australia to study has lived for many years. Miss Prichard, in private Australian literatm-e under the auspices of the Aus life Mrs. Hugo Throssell, has a son, Ric, who is a tralian Humanities Research Council. well-known Australian playwright. To mark the 50th anniversary of her writing He described Canadians as a young people in career, the Australasian Book Society has just pub- a young, violent land, hemmed in by the influences iisiied a book of her short stories—Ngoola and Other of their neighbours, especially the United States, Stories. This will make the fist of her publications while Australians were a young people in an old, 15 books of fiction, two books of poetry and a play. (ir\- kind, who were isolated. Canadians were more 20 WESTERLY a social novel The £500 \Iiles Franklin Literary Award, which will be made under the terms of the late Miss Frank nOROTHY HEWETT, was born in Western Aus- lin's v\ill for the novel of Australia published in 1959 *' tralia in 1923 and spent her childhood on a farm. of the highest literary merit. If no novel is con She returned to Perth after ten years as a Sydney sidered worthy, stage, television and radio plays will housewife in a working class district and a year be considered. Entries close on December 31. working in a spinning mill. Her novel is the story of a group of women working in a textile mill. At present she is an arts student at the University of Western Australia. prize-winning poets Bobbin Up was one of two novels highly com TWO young West Australian poets, both with poems mended in the 19.58 £200 Mary Gilmore Novel Com in this issue of Westerly, have won first and second petition, .sponsored by the May Day committees of prizes in the Queensland Authors' and Artists' Asso the trades halls of Newcastle, Sydney and Mel ciation £50 centenary competition for unpublished bourne. The judges said it was by far the most verse with an Australian flavour suitable for setting successful novel of the militant labour movement to music. They are Griffith Watkins, who won the they had read. The competition was won by David £50 first prize, and John O'Brien, who won £15 for Forrest, of Brisbane, with The Last Blue Sea, a novel second prize. about wartime New Guinea. This year's £200 award O « ff will be for a full-length play. Entries already have closed. opera of the North n ALGERIE, a oiie-act opera based on a novel of Northern Australia, Keep Him My Country, had writer's W.A. visit outstanding success when presented at the Festival CHREWD, laconic Kylie Tennant, the well-known of Perth earlier this year. The libretto was by Mary Sjdney novelist, flew into Perth for a brief visit Durack, who also wrote the book, and the music was during the Festival of Perth. She gave a talk on by James Penberthy. The Australian Elizabethan Australian literature, took part in a fonmi on "The Theatre Trust has taken a three-year option on the City or the Bush" and ran a weekend writers' work opera. It is the story of an aboriginal girl and a shop. Then she flew out again. white man who fall in love. competitions contributions TWO vahiable novel competitions are now open. A RIGINAL stories, poems and articles on any They are: ^ theme will be welcomed by the editor, especially The £1,000 Queensland Centenary Novel Compe those from young writers from all States and abroad. tition sponsored by the Brisbane Courier-Mail and Nhinuscripts cannot be returned unless a stamped, Sunday Mail for an unpublished novel with some addressed envelope is enclosed. Brief biographical Queensland background or interest. Entries close on information with each contribution would be ap December 1. preciated. PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED acknowledgement does not preclude subsequent review After the Ball, Ijy Alan D. Mickle. Cheshires, Melbourne, 6,'-; West Coast Stories, a West Australian anthology, selected by H. Drake-Brockman. Angus and Robertson, Sydney. 20/-; N'GooIa and Other Stories, by Katharine Susann.ah Prichard. Australasian Book Society, Melbourne. 17/6; Prospect, vol. 2, no. 1, 1959, a quarterly re view. Universities Catholic Publishing Co-operative, Melbourne. 2/-; Overland, no. 14, edited and published by S, Murray-Smith, Melbourne, 2/6. WESTERLY 21 Australian Forest, Shaw Neilson's lunr>- Australian verse; one of compiled for transplanting of the physical im verse historically and socially in agination of border folk poetry to teresting; one of poems technically its editors the Australian bush, Christopher interesting; one of good poems of Brennan's symbolist poetry, Ber the past; one of good modern PENGUIN ANTHOLOGY OF nard • O'Dowd's hairy attempt, poems. AUSTRALIAN VERSE again, at a ceremonial ode and A general reflection on our so on. poetry came to me from reading THIS anthology, edited l)y John Finally, for those interested in this anthology. There flows from Thompson, Kenneth Slessor poetry and who don't care where the iioetry of the greatest writers and R. G. Hov.arth, is obviously it is written and for those inter a thought, emotion and imagina intended to interest a wide pub- ested in modern poetry no matter tive insight which is markedly in lie. But what is- this pubfic? where it conies from, I would dividual. To be held firmly in a I'liere seems to be at least five compile anthologies of good poetry fresh vein of life, and to feel emo different groups of readers, each written in Austraha. These would tions and thoughts beating to a with a different interest in Aus be small and therefore probably different and stronger pulse, is one tralian verse. unsaleable. of the rewards of reading great There are those fascinated b>- My criticism of the Penguin an poetry. Australia but not interested in it thology, in fact, is that it is com- It seems to me that the best or in poetry, who will however buy Penguin books. For them, I would compile an anthology of the woolhest poems, full of wild ecjoiiial bo>s, drovers, people lov ing a sunburnt country and ador ing the outback; poems with queer alioriginal names, rites and pas rcvif^w times. It would be funny and SECTION false to an Australian, but not to some overseas readers. piled to please its editors, which Australian poets show an imagina Tlien there are those really in is fatal in a representative collec tive grasp of their "vision" which terested in Australia, but not in tion. The number of good poems is either slight or which tends to poetry. For them I would com in the collection is much smaller be clumsy. Neilson is singular pile a selective anthology, with than the number of poems chosen. but attenuated; Brennan is dae poems that would reveal our fore The reason for choosing inferior monic but narrow; O'Dowd is full fathers getting used to and finally poems (in spile of wliat is said in of potential energy but clumsy and accepting Australia. It would in tlie introduction) must be some- strained. I would say that the clude poems from Harpur's de lliing other than an interest in physical sensuou.sne.ss of Slessor is lightful attempt to make wallabies good poetry. And if the reason only superficially alive; it is not hop about in a Wordsworthian is interest in Australia, then we felt beating in the rhythms and landscape to Judith N\'right's vision Iiave to realize how varied that texture of his poetry. Miss of the double tree and A. D. interest is. Wright's poetry has a lambent Hope's Austraha. It would not be 1 am not belittling interest as beauty but it is not rooted far afraid of including interesting bad a criterion. Sensible people enjoy enough inside, or with tough verse. a good deal of poetry because it enough roots. For that group interested „ in interests them, even if it is not Reading the run of our con Australian poetry—in poetry of a first rate. But from the point of temporary verse, I do not feel that country peopled chiefl)' by immi view of good poetrj', this an any of it is beginning to do what grants brought up in the traditions thology is too inclusive; from the the Elizabethans expected great of English and European poetry— point of view of interest, it is too poetry to do—to ravish the mind I woirld elioose a highly-selective exclusive. and heart. Our Australian poetry anthology. This would include I think the ideal Penguin an- interests, cajoles, delights often; such poems as Charles Harpur's thologN might be divided into but it does not ravish. adaptation of 18th Centur>' pas sections according to the . readers I am not saying, in this, that it toral ill Midsummer Noon in the sni'i;;ested above: one section of is not worth reading; only that we 22 WESTERLY have produced, so far, a body of It concerns a (luarter-casle. Bronco Jones. .\lr. Herbert does not minor poetry—sometimes odd, J(;nes, who OVMIS a cattle-run of allow him to emerge as a distinc sometimes beautiful, sometimes sorts on the ancient totem site of tive personality. Rather, he keeps piquant, but never with the the Emu people. Barely making liim neutral, the better to work out authentio signs cf really great a living, he takes into j)artnership the conflict within him caused by poetry. In this we are no better a wiiite man, Appleby Gaunt, a his mixed parentage. or worse han Canada or Nev\' character of enshrouded ]iast and Mr. Herbert manages to convey Zealand, I would sa>-, but better great optimism. The latter's a good deal of this internal con than South Africa and worse than gi'andio.se schemes have brought flict by the external action—-prin- the United States. the st^.tion to the verge of bank- cipal!)' by making a most unflat Alec King rupn'y when \hdcolm Goborrow, tering comparison between the Penguin Books, Middlesex. 5/6. an ;.ntlu()p()logist, arrives to study aloof and dignified tribal elders tlie totem site of the Seven Emus and the deceitful and mercenary and wants to take the valuable white men. This serves, too, as the meat and dreaming stone. He offers to give ;> comment on white interference the station the mone\' its sale in aboriginal affairs. It is notice the shadow would bring, provided all the sci able diat when Bronco is running entific kudos attached to the dis the cattle-run on his own, his busi cover)' of the stC'iie accrue to him SEVEN EMUS (Xavler Herbert) ness, without providing him with self. Goborrow enlists the sup cigars, at least keeps him in roll port of Gaunt, and on the pressure ing tobacco. With the arrival of ANYBODY who has read .Xavier the\ bring to bear on Bronco and Gaunt, his finances sweep high to •'* Herbert's Capricornia doubt on Brenco's desire to get rid of the crest of an enormous wave less wfll remember it in terms of Gaunt, the action is built. only to crash down under a first the strenth and vitafity of its raw class dumper. material and its direct honest writ The beginning is wearisome, ing. One felt the deficit in pofish couched in long weighty sentences Much of the book is dependent and finesse to be more than coun tliat entangle the meaning. Just on this sort of contrast or parallel ter-balanced by the vigour and why \\Y. Herbert has adopted this ism of black and white: Bronco's colour. style is not clear but the regu unpretentious home life compared But in this novel, Mr. Herbert larity with which these over with the opulence of Gaunt's; has by-passed die lusty unrefined burdened passages crop up points Bronco's integrity against the lack element for the less tangible abo to some deliberate purpose. Per it in Goborrow; the native drink riginal spirit world with its totems, haps they do suggest the tone of ing habits beside those of the dream symbols and devil-devils. a long-winded yarn, but un whites. Although Mr. Herbert doubtedly the best parts of the He has dropped the meat for tlie makes his point through the events book are those in which the story themselves, by sitire, and through shadow as it were, with the result is carried forward in the short contrast, he refuses to let the that diose who expected another sentences of eonversarion. matter rest there, but has to novel of the calibre and content of colour his language against his Capricornia will have to swallow Some of the passages of descrip villanis instead of letting them their disappointment and accept tion are highly evocative and writ condemn themselves out of their this as a consolation prize. ten with rare feefing. Mr. Her own mouths. Nevertheless the book is inter bert's sensitivity and love of the esting for a number of reasons. bush is apparent when he des Even so, he is more restrained It is die first novel published by cribes the North-West scene at than he was in Capricornia and Mr. Herbert since he won the nieht, with its deep, soft shad generally he permits the reader to Commonwealth Government's ses- ows, misty moonlight, and sharp sit back and enjoy a long range qui-centenary prize with Capri sounds. \ie\\' without dragging him along cornia in 1938, and is therefore Goborrow- is fairly harshly by the ear to ha\e a closer look. One can appreciate such an in something of an event. It is drawn and is not a very attractive cident as Bronco, unjustly con quieter in mood and more re figure nor entirely credible. Gaunt victed, sitting in court and staring strained in expression than his first is more likeable. He is a rogue up at the white-man totem sign: book and one is inclined to won and quite selfish, yet he has Dieu et mon droit. der at the change. humanity enough to keep from The story itself, as promised by being a complete blackguard. The The end of the story is pleasant die jacket, is entertaining enough. most surprising character is Bronco without being of any moment and WESTERLY 23 is in keeping with the rest of the never far from tlie grouiuL That ia iiiigiish at the University of yarn. It prcvides a logical con is not intended as a damning Adelaide, educated at Geelong clusion to the underlying theme— comment; one of the most import Grammar and Oxford, served in that only in complete divorce from ant functions a writer can perform the R.A.A.F. during the war and physical contact with the whites is to keep poetry alive for a wider after lived for some years in Lon can ab()ri:-^ines ;aid mixed-bloods circle of readers. That is what don and the south of France and hope to find happiness and pros- Mr. Dutton can do, and if, in travelled through Greece and the pertiy. achieving a low-voiced common Middle East. He may well Ix- Despite the fact that even style, lie hasn't gi^eatly enriched taken to st ind for a large nunib- more care could have been taken our poetic tradition, it must be ber of Australians, particularly with the actual writing of this said to his credit that he hasn't academics with similar history, book, it nevertheless belies the hackneyed or enfeebled it either. whose travels have given them a amount cf thought that has been He doesn't rise to metrical subtle similar store of reflections and at put into it. Most of its value fies ty, except in imitative forms, and titudes. in its theme, much of the empha his thought isn't often iirofound or Mr. Dutton is a poet whose sis f.dls on the dreaming world passionate, but he has achieved a imagination is dominated by lit and a great deal of attention has vernacular of poetry which is both erature, but all too often, one is been given to the balancing and sensitive and witty. conscious of ghostly voices speak oil-setting of characters. He is often at his best in the ing over his shoulder. If he A ]nore si.'rious or more lively lively and local twist of a stan meditates on the boats at anchor treatment of tlie same plot might dard reflection, as in diis from in the harbour of Thessalonica, he have given a result of greater Theburton Hall: can powerfully engage the sense c(mse 24 WESTERLY where an opponent of the over tiretl, war-scarred Europe. But if sonal strain that it is hard to be whefining materialism which in Europe's spirit is tired, at least for lieve in his seriousness when he fects it. Here is a rather obvious Mr. Dutton it is there, while the goes on the rampage against bour example in an attack on the Australian spirit has learned to do geois iiiSinsitivity: wowser: nothing but dominate, to impose Let wild extravagance He'll teach us that all beauty itself in all its narrowness with Some \'ast, stupendous p:ut> lies tiie axe, the bulldozer and the give. Pleasantly practical before our At which no man shall die licensing laws. Like most Aiis- Till he's begun to live. e\es, trafian intellectuals, Mr. Dutton .\nd \\ ith his shears he will One feels here that the enemy of release remains "uncommitted". At the wowserism is speaking, rather than The golden strands of lason's centre of the uncommitted Aus the poet. .Mr. Dutton's most con fleece. tralian is the conflict between the vincing voice is the voice of the Lest we get up to drunken tricks active and the contemplative life; HeTl close down all the pubs romantic exile wliese hell is other at six. of raw energy and tradition. He people, whose destiny is to feel And that religion m.ay be dead has a strong historical sense with the compulsion of the for all out wishing for the European's wound Turn every Sunday to a funeral. feeling of deep involvement in In the sea's back for each one The inert emotions of the aver history; he calls for a regenera (;f us age man are often finely hit off in tion of spirit without appearing to To s\\ ini alone in time, and whose life belongs to the lines like: believe in regenerative religion. secret places of the imaginatiem, . . . The shining car before him One cannot often feel that Mr. of which he writes: holds Old Baldy necking in the shade Dutton has brought anything new . . . . Although the bulldozer of gumnuts to these problems and indeed his has got With his baby sweetheart in an poems often read like exceedingly The right of way through avenue upholstered dream. good essays on topics hke Present and drive Their piiN'ate e.xisls keep us all On the other hand, Australia versus Past, City versus Country, alive. sometimes appears as the countr> or Sofitude versus Society. He Perhaps the poems themselves of youth, life, vitality, a new chall u.sually handles the tiresome dia are private exists and that, for all enge to the imagination against lectic with so little sense of per their admirable surface clarity. Your rendezvous for ALL occasions .... L^aptain STIRLING HIGHWAY, NEDLANDS VISIT OUR NEW LOUNGE AND COCKTAIL BAR All orders for functions promptly attended to. Phones 86 3348 86 4977 WESTERLY 25 the) give little sense of the press or at least in die stories here, to painting of birds by Gould, but ure and turbulence of thought and be bitter. In fact, there is occa- they p:de a little beside those of feeling. .Mr. Dutton can tell us sionaUy a hint that the writer ma>' D. H. Lawrence, whose blazing with admirable compression that be playing to a national market b> sympathy seemed to be able to the function of poetry is to talk slighting the foreign culture with burn through the outer brilliance sense to desire, but his own verse its colonial associations. of fruit or flo\ver to the mystery too often entertains desire with There are 14 poems l)\' .Aus- of bud or seed. horse-ser.se, and his images, being trahans and about 30 by .Asians, \hir\ Gilmore's sharp little of the xioetie vernacular, never but the Austrahan poetry is ver\ poem, Nationality, is very properly satisfy as if the living daylights much better in quality. The Aus included. Its epigrammatic com of the man had blazed on us with tralian poetry seems denser in ment on the cause of nationalist more t'v...,-, flip light of the norm d meaning and idea and superior in sentiment is a useful dash of the S'.m. technique and imagination. i\h)st bitters of realism without prejudice David Bradley of our best contemporary poets to the purpose of the anthology. Edwards and Shatc, Sydney. 17/6. are represented—Wright, F.t/- The other Australian poets are ger.dd, Hope, Gilmore, Moore, O. represented by fairly characteristic Stew.irt, Wtbli, Campbell, Robin- verses. Colombo Plan ,on et al—while it is probable If the Australians can claim to that Asia's best are not. More dominate the poetry, they can not in literature over, a ninnber of the Asian poems do so for the prose, and this is not have been translated (the editor mereh' because the Asians can SPAN should have indicated this more write about things which are un U()\\' should one judge an an- clearly). Those which, like familiar to most of us. Perhaps "^ tholog\ like this? Should it Chinese poetry, are brief com Asian writers are closer to suffer be judged in the light of the ments on a passing mood or upon ing than most Australians and slightly pretentious sub-title—An a simple landscape, may in the therefore more aware of life and adventure in .Asian and Australian (;riginal have had some of that tleath. Australia's prose writers writing—or strictly as a literary exquisite precisicm which is claim appear to be temporarily suspend work? The final words of die ed for Chinese poetr>'. ed between the vigour and vitalit> introduction of the editor, Lionel \hirgaret Cliatterjee's In a of literary pioneering and the ur Wigniore, are; If it sharpens in Young Year suggests the earlier banity proper to an essentially terest in the countries rei>resented. Jndid) Wright: city-dwelling people. and serves as a base for further As traveller's on the edge of a .Alan Marshall and GeofFrey such neighbourly publications, it tlark e(nuitr> Dutton can write of wild ducks will have done its job. It is fairly We stand—against the haunted and e.igles. Their sentiment is hinterland ctrtain that this modest hope, at Of \esterda\s. for the \ear is \'oung good and is evidence of kindli least, has been fulfilled, although All! there ;ire many days to come. ness, but their stories lack the the quality is uneven. It may be cultur.d conditioning riclmt-ss that they might have had Of all the national groups, the that makes this secaii the best ni if either writer knew more of the Phifippines is the most interesting. the Asian poems. symbolism in cultures where ani There is something rather more Judith Wright has two poems. mals usually have holy or super liiiropean about the quality of the They have that rather dark and stitious associations. S. Rajarat- wit, the texture of the imagination fearful qualit>' of her Liter poeti\, nam's The Tiger is not as good and the nostalgia for the past where she seems to liave become tethnieally, but is more interesting than in the other Asian stories or fascinated by some slowly whirl in its partial failure because of the poems. I'erhaps the American ad ing images in her own richly im suggestion of symbolism. ministration has killed any distaste aginative mind. Some of her later Mena Abdullah and Ray for the Sp:mish period, so that it verses suggest the tortuous spirals \hithew make excellent use of the is now regarded as a native cul in a Blake xiainting. conjunction of Afghan and Aus ture. Douglas Stewart continues his tralian cultures in their story The The Indian and Indonesian botanical and biological studies Time of the Peacock. This does stories, on the other hand, show with a poem about silkworms, one not rely on an unusual theme for signs of rejection of English or of the best of this series. His its effect. The story has a wry Dutch culture, hut it is pleasing c!ev( .• verses have something of cliarni and flashes of unsenti that this rejection does not appear. the attractive stiltedness of a mental poetr\', which are the 26 WESTERLY achievements of technique as well period with comic self-criticism, Iiave no clear picture of what the as of subject. suggesting encouraging elements \'ear's poetry has been." Some of the .Asian stories are of maturity that we do not read This extract from the foreword versions of a theme common to about in the Press. describes my own experience of all literatures: the humbling of A niunber of the stories are selecting poetry for possible pub conceit. -\. J. Dalal's The Silver genuinely comic. Of the Austra- lication. It seems essential to Anklets does not achieve the hans, this is most true of Dal poets and verse writers that their fresh humour of "Zawgyi's" His Stivens who is alwa^'s more truly products be individual. Spouse and Munitaz Shireen's De humorous when he resists tlie Is there anything in the atmos feat is a moving tale of the tragic temptations of the tall story. Of phere of a particular year to tint aspect of humbled pride which the Asian stories, Khawaja Ah- all its poetic products one hue? gains by a simple, straightforward mand Abba's Maharaja's Ele I think not, yet it seems strangely telling. The Horror of Mahahena, phant mocks gently both British possible to make a few general by the Prime Minister of Ceylon, and Indain pomp, Sri Thandaves- comments. For example, to com S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, is a wara's Achha Dood reveals the pare this selection with one made curious combination of the very ethics of milk-watering in India, in 19.54, it becomes apparent that English detective story and a Krishna Baldev N'aid's A Man of most of the 19.58 poems are easier rather ghoulish variation of the Moods tells of a remarkable In to understand at once, more met vampire theme. It is strangely dian Jeeves and Mochtar Lubi's rically formal and linked more distasteful. The Lotteries of Haji Zakaria is closely with natural objects such Change is naturally the theme an Indonesian moral tale for as birds and animals, trees and of many—die coming of Western gambling Australians. earth, lovers and children. But technology, the decay of old cul The two stories that best reflect it is uncomfortably true that tures, die conflict of ideologies. the liuman comedy are the Pakis critical taste is never satisfied, and These stories range in depth from tani Saadat Hasan Manto's Black I feel a little uneasily that this the simple tale, by Bhabani Bhat- Shalwar, a tale of a casual pros collection rings Hke the ghostly tacharya, of an ox-cart driver suc titute told without any of the echo of a Georgian anthology. cumbing reluctantly to the fascina slightly salacious self-consciousness There is much direct and, in tion of an aeroplane, to die more that afflicts most Western writers, deed, often delivate description, complex study of terrorism in even French, and the Philippine seemingly just for its own sake, of Malaya from one of Han Suyin's Alejandro R. Roce's Of Cocks and man in relation to nature. For in novels. Kings—a delightfully dry, picar stance, taking names and poems Eknath Easwaran has an amus esque story. Perhaps it is in such alphabetie.ally, as the authors have ing sketch of a village storekeeper- stories, rather than in the tragic chosen to group them, we find in postman, who can combine his ones, that we most firmly establish Jessica Aldridge's Itafian Work two roles in selling an envelope kinship. men on a Country Road an Aus and a half-bottle of coconut oil to David Hutchison tralian morning landscape in har a single customer. He is terrified, Published for the Canberra Fel mony with "the live darkness" of however, when a telegram arrives lowship of Australian Writers by new -Australian faces—this and no for himself, for the Indian villager Cheshire, Melbourne. 25/-. thing more. The opening stanzas has also learnt to distrust the por of Anne Bell's Johnny Fox give a tents of urgent news. MuUc Raj flickering excitement of something Anand relates the story of a wily well-nibbled new which peters out into the singer who averts conflict by con well-worn pathos of a snared rab vincing superstitious villagers that bit. Nancy Cato's Mallee Fanner the new dam being built in their pastures seems a sad little echo of the old valley is the incarnation of their .Australian theme of no-rain-on-a- VERSE IN AUSTRALIA, 1958 goddess. hot-tin-roof. Mary Finnan's Off Shears, Ray Mathew's One Winter Two of the Indonesian stories— AUSTRALIAN poets pubfished Morning, Brian Medlin's song The Achdiat K. Mihardja's Haiiiid and ^ 1,000 poems, maybe a little Rains Have Come in the Niiddle Pramoedya Ananta Toer's Born more or less, during the 12 months of June, Roland Robinson's The Before the Da-wn^deal with the ended 30th June, 1958 Rabbit, David Rowbottom's Three Indonesian revolutionary period. It Every >'ear this happens. . . . We Horses and John Thompson's Song is heartening to see that Indo- read each new poem . . . we scan of the Fruit-Growers, individual as n&sian writers can consider this the volume, but at the end we WESTERLY 27 tlie>' may be technically, all give know more than they know," clear and in good taste and the the feeling tlie> have been met makes an impression on both emo brief biographies at tlie end may before, sometimes in a stronger tion and memory. Kathleen Dal do something to publicise some and firmer guise. ziel's Mating Season dehghts me. little-known writers. If they do, There are other poems which It has a strong and cleverly used I'm all for it. Yet, in spite of could be called descriptive nature rhythm which accentuates the agreeing with Dr. Leonie Kram l>ries, but which seem to strike local colour and the colloquial er's remark that too many critics some deeper, wider and more rich treatment of the subject—the mat of anthologies tended to let per ly poetic note. New Spring of ing season of the black snakes. sonal likes blot out the selection James McAuley, for instance, Ran The poem ends with the direct before them and tried to substi dolph Stow's Country Children and unoniamented lines: tute an imaginary anthology of and Kathleen Dalziel's Mating A man in the dark can't see their own compiling. I felt that Season, together with Kenneth too clear this collection could hardly repre Slessor's Polarities, are, to my But a country snake sees red. sent the full range of a year of So don't go ualks this time of mind, the pick of the coflection. the year— Australian poetry. If it does, I For a certain delicate formality^ Or so the bushmen said. feel uneasy and a little sad. The I could add Gwen Harwood's A Polarites is not one of Slessor's young, honest and still uncertain Postcard and Stow's Language of best, but it has realit>' and writers are given ample room and Flowers, and, for a personally warmth. there are some older and deeper realised and more subtle feeling Tamparlooitimo's Lament, trans voices heard, but are there no and thought, Francis Webb's Hos lated from the aboriginal by Stuart poems of our matured poets that pital Night. Scougall (with the original given), can give meaning and widtli to McAule>''s New Spring, with its is more a curiosity than a poem, these pleasant yet well-nibbled Yeatsian vocabulary and gentle although it has some quality which and rather nurser\'-like pastures? lyrical melancholy, touches no new is hard to define. Personally, I chord and yet is pleasurable. prefer Bruce Beaver's White Cat Gaye Tennent Stow's CountiA" Children I liked and Brown Girl in which the abo A yearly collection, .selected by very much for its firm grasp of rigine theme is treated simply \'et Robert Clark, Geoffrey Dutton, subject-matter and clarity of form. s\uipatlietically. Max Harris and Ian Mudie. Aus The refrain: "Country children The book's format is pleasant. tralian Letters, Adelaide. 15/-. ^s0mmf: FULL INSURANCE 101 Stirling Highway, Nediands LOWEST RATfi PHOi^E: 86 2511 After hours: 861130 or 864598 LATEST MODELS 28 WESTERLY ^ne tyfnli/erditu llSoohdko, ^ jp at the University, Nedlands, Western Australia SPECIALISTS IN THE SERVICE OF SUPPLY OF UNIVERSITY TEXT BOOKS AND ORGANISED FOR OBTAINING ANY WOR KOF LITERATURE PUBLISHED OVERSEAS. 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