Randolph Stow’s latest novel, The Suburbs of Hell, may be read as a simple whodunit: a simple allegorical Whodunit. Like Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, like David Lodge’s Small World, this novel sets out to intrigue the reader. The new genre, nouvelle critique, teases the reader’s vanity, the reader’s erudition at the same time as it engages with questions of a metaphysical kind – the nature of truth, reality, and for those concerned with literature – the purpose of writing today.

It is often the case that a well-informed outsider can light on structures, habits of thought and patterns of behaviour which, to the people living them out, are neither perceived nor understood.

Vincent Buckley, who describes himself as a ‘loving outsider’, has visited Ireland on numerous occasions and lived there for long periods over almost thirty years. If he is an outsider, he is certainly a well-informed one, and no-one reading this book – subtitled ‘Insights into the contemporary Irish condition’ – can doubt that it is a book of love and, by that means, penetration.

I had thought, and still do, that the phenomenon of publishing a book in paperback only was a good thing, especially for fiction. As a bookseller, I observed the paperback achieve sales three and four times what they would have been if the book was hardback. It should be good for the author too, I thought. The lower royalty payment per book would have been more than compensated for by the higher sales and the larger audience. When I suggested this to a writer recently, he was quite adamant that paperback only editions meant that writers got a much smaller return because they missed out on PLR.

The first idea I remember having about the past as history was that people were more brutish then and more unjust because they were more ignorant. History was progress. This was the enlightened age.

I was about nine at the time, a boarder at a Catholic convent in Gippsland, but my naive notions of history were still shared by many historians. I had already devoured the ten volumes of Arthur Mees’s Children’s Encyclopaedia, especially the Greek and Roman myths and English kings and queens and proceeded to an ancient and British history in twenty volumes. My experience of Australian history was confined to Ethel Turner, Mary Grant Bruce, and a picture book series of stories from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century history – the explorers Eureka, the Rum Rebellion. Hegel came a lot later, and, strangely enough, via one of the nuns.

This is the largest and most eclectic of Wilding’s four collections of short stories so far. Its 284 pages include stories ranging from ninety pages and two. Mostly written in the first person, they range in space between England and Australia, go back to the childhood of the narrator(s) (sometimes identified as Mike or Michael, making the autobiographical inferences irresistible) and in mode range from social realism through to the surrealistic modes of ‘What it was like, sometimes.’

Serpent’s Tooth is a massive, sprawling novel. It is panoramic in its vision of twentieth century social and political history, and meticulous in its rendering of one man’s struggle to sustain the mighty ideal his father has inspired in him.

In his father’s footsteps, Roger Milliss takes up the challenge of communism not only as an alternative to capitalism, ‘a rival system of ideas, a strategy and set of tactics that would challenge the hegemony’, but also as a personal vocation.

At the August 1984 conference of Australian historians, the Public Lecture Theatre at Melbourne University was packed to hear a panel of distinguished colleagues discuss Geoffrey Blainey’s creation of the public debate on Asian immigration. Blainey did not attend. His mentor Manning Clark did, though he refused to denounce his most famous pupil. Surrender Australia? is largely the product of that meeting. Historians take themselves rather seriously and already there have been complaints that a concerted attack on one of the discipline’s favourite sons is unprecedented. Letters to The Age were denouncing the book as ‘an attack on a great Australian’ well before it was published or the correspondents could see the contents. Public controversy is certainly rare among local historians, being largely confined to such esoteric matters as whether Australia was settled to get rid of convicts or to acquire flax, an argument in which Blainey took a major role. In a small society, academics do not usually denounce each other in the fashion long acceptable in central Europe or America. Equally, they do not often engage in public controversy on matters which draw in the vulgar multitude. While professional historians are not very radical, they mostly subscribe to liberal views, among which tolerance for minorities and for the ideas of others are the most acceptable. Blainey presented his colleagues with a dilemma. They could draw up their skirts and pass by on the other side, or they could publicly disagree with him.

When I first heard of an impending Atlas of Australian Birds, my expectations were, it now seems to me, naive, showing certainly no acquaintance with the ‘birds atlas projects [which] have been developed in many other countries’ (actually, the bibliography numbers attached to this direct us to just three such projects: a use of ‘many’ learned, perhaps, from such usages as ‘this wine will improve with cellaring for many years’).

I must declare an interest. Dickins was once a student of mine and is still a friend. Readers of this review are invited to exercise their reservations.

I believe The Crookes of Epping is in the tragi-comic tradition of Charlie Chaplin which reaches back to one of the world’s greatest books, Don Quixote. In it pathos is as important an element as humour, wit and absurdity. It also has a connection with the earliest Greek Comedy in which the celebration of the God Dionysus was an important element.

The Great Mint Swindle was one of the most outrageous frauds in the history of Australian crime. On 22 June 1982, the closely guarded Perth Mint handed over, without a murmur, $650,000 worth of gold bars, which were never to be seen again. Not a shot was fired, not a person threatened. It was all done with three fake building society cheques, which the Mint accepted without question. The mastermind behind the ingenious swindle never showed his face.

In Grade 5 social studies we ‘did’ Australia. After Captain Cook and the first fleet and settlement, and a couple of lessons spent drawing Aboriginal mia-mias and weaponry came the explorers. Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson, Hume and Hovell, Major Mitchell, Burke and Wills Captain Sturt, and Edward John Eyre … Their names and achievements were committed to memory as surely as the three times table. But as our sticky hands traced maps from our atlases onto lunch wrap paper and into our exercise books – there to be outlined in accident-prone Indian ink, and the dotted lines of exploration marked – the explorers somehow failed to grasp our imaginations. We experienced little sympathy with their effort or their suffering, and only a mechanical recognition of the importance of their discoveries.

It was my good fortune to be born into a family for whom books and paintings had a central place. My parents subscribed to an excellent lending library and were adventurous readers of novels. During the Depression they could not often afford to buy a painting, but they went to art shows and Sunday visits to the Art Gallery of New South Wales were frequent in my childhood.

Children’s book reviewer Hazel Edwards adds her thoughts to the debate.

In Australia, few publications regularly review children’s books for the information of the general reader/buyer. ASA chairman, Ken Methold, suggests that Australian writers need to advertise their varied skills and publicise their works. I agree.

Before I came across this attractive and instructive book, I knew very little of the art of Sam Byrne, thinking of him merely as one of a group of outback ‘primitives’ based on Broken Hill, the Silver City, of whom the best known is Pro Hart.

On page 87 of Michael Sharkey’s The Way It Is, there is a photograph of the poet reading the National Farmer (a weekly rural newspaper), which shows what happens when you lock up the well-read in a small rural town. Armidale mightn’t Pontus or Bandusia, and you don’t have to have crossed Augustus or have been befriended by Maecenas to get there, but once you are, it certainly changes your idea of ‘the way it is’. Drought, rain, frost, journeys, and drunkenness, obsession with the weather in general, and an almanac of solar and lunar occurrences becomes the raw material of your verse – as it was for those other rural exiles in the Tang dynasty, Li Po and Tu Fu.

Keith Willey died on 6 September 1984. He had just submitted the manuscript of what was to be his last book. A study of Australian humour in adversity titled You Might As Well Laugh Mate, it summed up the man, not least in his last days. Sardonic, self-effacing, unashamedly Australian.

In the UK Bookseller, the self-named ‘organ’ of the VAT-proof Thatcherland, the gossip columnist, one Horace Bent, speculated that Simon and Schuster International were running their New York eyes over Thomson Books UK. However, Thomson, the umbrella sheltering Nelson from the noonday sun, along with pedigree icons Hamish Hamilton, Michael Joseph, and the slightly more louche Sphere and Abacus paperback lists, has chosen the dignified flippancy of Penguin over any other suitor. My source was impeccable, Penguins never lay eggs that don’t hatch, and the news is now yesterdays, unless of course you happen to be a Nelson employee crystal-gazing into the Penguin pond!

Shallows

Dear Editor,

I write regarding Nancy Keesing’s complimentary but insufficient review of Tim Winton’s second novel, Shallows, in ABR (February–March, 1985). The reviewer’s expectations appear to have predetermined her evaluation of the novel’s worth. That Shallows exhibits the trademarks of a sophisticated narrative and structure, surpassing what one would normally expect from a young person, merely causes the reviewer to draw attention to the exceptionable nature of this fact rather than evaluate the merits of the novel in its own terms. As a result, her praise is patronising (albeit unintentionally).

A more serious consequence of such an emphasis on Winton’s youthfulness is that the fuller dimensions of the narrative have not been sufficiently related in the review. As Nancy Keesing correctly observes, it is true that Winton has captured the small­town life of Albany, WA. It is true that he provides many interesting points of information re: whales and whaling. So also does he capture the nuances of social conversation and the contradictions of political activism.

But to only note these aspects of the story is to miss the essence or heart of the narrative’s taut dramatic structure. Keesing has adequately conveyed to her readers that Shallows is a ‘ripping yarn’ but has barely hinted that it is essentially a meta­physical thriller, replete with a tapestry of interweaving layers of meaning.

The ocean, for example, not only acts as a battleground between the whalers and conservationists but is symbolic of the moral and spiritual turmoil being experienced by the main characters. The question of life’s ultimate meaning for Queenie and Cleve (the two main characters), becomes intricately related to the destiny of the whales who metaphorically embody moral ambiguity by beaching themselves (seemingly without purpose) at the end of the novel. To quote another reviewer of Shallows, ‘Winton writes of people who are searching for moral and spiritual structure in the universe – or who have given up the search but keep running smack into it …’ In Shallows, Winton has shown himself to be a ‘first rate’ writer. That he is ‘young’ is incidental. His work stands on its merit.

Trevor Hogan, North Carlton

Dear Editor,

A note about an item in Michael Johnson’s column in the February–March issue of ABR.

The name of Kate Grenville’s novel has been changed to Lilian’s Story. We wholeheartedly agree with Michael’s comments on Kate Grenville’s future – and the signs are that some of the more discerning British and American publishers agree with us! (Lilian’s Story will be released in June, at a price of $14.95).

Matthew Kelly, Sponsoring Editor – General Books, Allen & Unwin Australia

First Contact

Dear John,

Under Mark Rubbo’s column in your February–March issue there is a reference to the publication of a book titled ‘First Contact’ by Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson. Mark Rubbo suggests that this book is being initiated by Penguin in the UK but this is not so.

Following the highly successful documentary of the same name, this office, in conjunction with our London and New York offices, offered the book of the film to a number of New York and London publishers. Of the offers received the best was from Viking Penguin in New York and our clients accepted this offer so this firm is the initiating publisher not Penguin UK.

Following the sale to New York the offers made by London publishers were considered and it was agreed to go with Penguin UK for the British Commonwealth market.

The decision to offer this book in this way was made early on as there was never any doubt there would be a substantial market in Australia. To achieve the international sales the book deserved it was felt a commitment from New York in particular, as well as London, would more easily enable the book to follow the international success of the documentary.

Tim Curnow, Curtis Brown (Aust.) Pty. Ltd.

Festival

Dear Editor,

As one who attended the Writers Celebrate Sydney weekend during the January Festival of Sydney, I would like to correct the impression given by Michael Johnson in ABR’s February–March issue.

Certainly Sydney was bedevilled with a train strike and certainly the organisers – National Book Council, New South Wales, led by Tom Thompson – wondered whether anyone would come to this two-day free event held under the magnificent chandelier in the Vestibule of the Sydney Town Hall.

The response surprised everyone. People were waiting for the front doors to open from about one hour before the advertised commencement time.

Every seat (about 250) was filled for the first session and people sat on the floor or stood in the doorways. By the Sunday afternoon session, with extra seats added and all doors on both sides of the hall open, people were standing wherever they could find room: Town Hall employees estimated that 500 were present.

Those attending were a mixture of proven writers and general public, including overseas and interstate visitors present because of good media publicity. All were enthusiastic.

The speakers and chairmen, all highly regarded writers in a variety of fields, interested, informed and entertained the audience – thus providing living examples of what good writing should do. There was plenty of time for questions – and no dearth of these.

The festival committee and Sydney City Council expressed themselves as delighted with the event and with the hope that such a gathering of writers will become a regular feature of the Sydney Festival.

What was missing was participation by publishers (except small presses) and booksellers. They presented themselves in March, during what was euphemistically called Australian Authors’ Week, at Circular Quay where several authors with recently launched books were featured among stalls and igloos containing Australian books for sale. An attractive Book Fair like that would have complemented and enhanced the writers’ contribution to the Festival of Sydney.

Lysbeth Cohen, Wollstonecraft, NSW

I saw an elderly, quite famous poet sitting all forlorn on a large boulder, neither quite inside a lecture room nor quite outside on the leafy lawn.

Her location, and the droop of her shoulders said, See, I am alone. I knew her, I had taken her once on a short publicity round in Sydney, years ago: should I stop and say, Remember me? Remember that book you wrote, how we thought it might change things, and perhaps it has.

But that would have violated her deliberately-chosen position. I remembered I had felt sorry for her then, years ago in Sydney, had tried clumsily to reach into her solitude across the barriers of brief, brisk professional acquaintances, the pressure of taxis and appointments. And had failed, which was proper, because suddenly I realised she cherished her solitude, wrapped it round her like melancholy armour. So I swept past in my chattering group and let the moment pass.

Was I right? Or callous, callow, misjudging?

This is Canberra’s second Word Festival, a kind of mini-Adelaide Writers’ Week, and many of the same faces are here. Of course I am relieved to see the familiar figures, and a shade bored too. I suppose by now my own face is also familiar. (‘Who is that woman? I’ve seen her around before.’ But maybe no-one asks. Which is worse?)

I didn’t want to come. My domestic life has suffered an upheaval lately, leaving me feeling empty and hollow, null and void. All those, and more. Or rather, less. I had not anticipated these feelings and what is frightening is, they’re getting stronger. If it goes on like this I shall be unable to appear in public at all, which will be disastrous. But if I fight against them and win, I may become hard and brittle, a ghastly gleaming facade with nothing behind it. This will be even more disastrous.

Luckily I have to come. One of my finest writers is going to be here, and she gently exhorts and persuades me. There are other writers here I need to see too. I know I should come, make an effort, raise the profile, oh God. Either that or stop. I will not stop.

And see how I am rewarded! The familiar faces are kind, reassuring; it seems I do still exist after all. The writers’ speech and demeanour remind me that they also battle with the curious and terrifying vagaries of the spirit, with fine results. An earnest young man talks to me far into the morning about metaphysics, determinism, preordination, chance, destiny, and personal decisions in various dimensions. I am a little lost in profundity, but happy anyway. It would not have happened if I’d stayed home.

There are plenty of grumblers, of course. The quality of the food – Doris Lessing’s acerbic replies to tentative questions – the irregular functioning of the microphones – the impossibility of attending four sessions simultaneously – the yawn-yawn predictability of certain speakers.

But others are having a good time. They are enjoying huge breakfasts, never eaten at home. They are listening to, learning from what they hear. There are opportunities to speak to writers you’ve always (or perhaps never) admired, you can get books signed too, no extra charge. A little gentlemanly business gets done in odd half-hours, quite a lot of it by me. (Gentlemanly is better than ladylike, although both are quaintly dated.)

In between discontent and delight, there is plenty of scope for public or private musing. On what principle did Humphrey McQueen decline his award for Best Book Reviewer? Why do some of us read all the time and yet end up having read so little? Do discussions of food and wine writing have any place at a literary festival? Are the people of Canberra – ‘the community’ as they’re called these days – represented in the audience? Who on earth wants to see and hear a writer anyway, why not just read the work? Why is there no discussion of the debasement of words? Why is there no real discussion full stop? Could it be otherwise?

I can think of two answers, neither satisfactory, so continue to toss and turn with the question.

There is ample opportunity for drinking, carousing, going to the races, swimming. None of this features on the official program but is an essential part of the fun. When I mention to a publisher that the bedrooms at University House have thin walls, he flashes me a look of horrified alarm. It’s all right, all right – I’m located in a different wing.

In the afternoons writers read from their own or other people’s work. (Most read from their own, naturally.) These sessions compete with panel discussions on assorted topics. We are encouraged to move from room to room, which is distracting for writers and panellists: One writer, awaiting her tum, watches anxiously as the audience gradually drifts away. Will she have to read to an empty room? Embarrassing. In fact everyone drifts back again as soon as she begins, and by the end of her half-hour there is not a chair or an inch of floorspace unoccupied.

There are several official lunches, dinners, book launchings. Doris Lessing shows her metal by attacking both newspapers and academics at a dinner sponsored by the Canberra Times, where she is introduced by Professor Elliott from the ANU; ‘The Community’, hundreds of it gets quite a buzz out of this.

Sipping a beer on a lawn bordered by flowerbeds, far too elegant to be called a beer garden, I am menaced by an uppity magpie. Later I am told that Canberra magpies actually make unprovoked and bloody attacks on people in their nesting season. (Did Daphne du Maurìer ever visit this town? Surely not.) Perhaps they are insufficiently accustomed to the sight of humans unencased by cars to allow us our space.

A great stroke of luck on the plane home. I had been too shy to ask Raymond Carver to sign a book for me: I had never read his work, mea culpa, and this seemed insulting. I knew that a friend would have particularly cherished a signed copy of Fires. When I mentioned this, with regret, to another festival participant, she generously let me have hers, insisting that it was the book, not the signature which mattered to her. It was a good festival.

In her book Gather Your Dreams Magda Bozic, a post-war European immigrant, demonstrates that all migrants have a ‘tale to tell’ about their experiences in coming to terms with their adopted homeland. Hers is not a horrific story of hardship or overt discrimination but an account of day-to-day incidents recalling early feelings of displacement, the gradual settling in over a period of twenty years, an eventual visit back to her place of birth and finally her return home to Australia.

The perennial problems that the migrant faces – the language barrier, adjusting to the climate, landscape and social customs – and the confusion they cause, are given dramatic force through simple and often humorous anecdotes.

A tense moment in this household is when two of my children produce books to be read. Mercifully, the Mr Men and the more excruciating of the Golden books have been mysteriously mislaid; and we have gone beyond whiffy Miffy. It is a delight to return to Aranea and John Brown and the Midnight Cat, by Jenny Wagner and Ron Brooks; to look again at Possum Magic by Mem Fox and Julie Vivas. And a bit sad to realise that the great achievement of contemporary children’s fiction is not given enough serious recognition in the community at large.

Sometimes I feel like quitting the whole scene. There’s so much hype and petty politicking. But that goes on in your own backyard. So there I am again – up there on stage, with Mike, wearing my Greek sailor’s cap, and my heart having stopped thumping now, because I’m reading what I really (may I be anachronistic?) dig, and am serious about – POETRY! I mean Gene Wilder really works hard at being a comedian, and me at my funny poems. ‘Well’ I might say ‘this is an angry poem, because I’m one of those angry middle-aged men’, or ‘this is called “Poem-Ugly” because a lot of what I write is ugly. I try to strip the veneer from my everyday matter mundane existence, the extraneous matter in my grey brain; to rarefy to an essence the human condition, and all I’ve got left is my bare existential soul, and my poem – but maybe that’s not too bad!’

The name of this collection, with its pastoral associations, is ironic. Here we have no neat opposition between the country and the city; instead the lyrical evocation of the countryside serves merely to emphasise the brutality that women suffer there as men exercise their economic power through sexual cruelty. This is particularly obvious in the first six stories, set in the previous generation, which lead up to the experience of the central character, Anne. Bella, for instance, of the story ‘Isabella’, has degenerated under the tyranny of her father from the proud Edwardian beauty in the parlour photographs to a ‘lazy fat slag’ (his words). Her ‘lair’ is a rural slum, her brain a swamp into which every scandal scarcely percolates: ‘… the pinpoint gleams of interest receding into the sluggish brain where she will mumble at the information for the rest of the day.’ Her death from gangrene parallels her mental decay. Mrs Scarr of ‘That Woman’, let down by her ‘gutless’ lover Lennie – ‘Usually he climbed through the rough orchard just after lunch and came to her back door red in the face and breathing hard. Today he came late …’ – must now find a new home for herself and her children. The child Danuta of ‘A Bad Influence’, pregnant at ten, having been exploited by all her male relatives – uncles, fathers, brothers – mimes her nocturnal experience to her school friend:

Three new books of poetry, significantly from three different publishers, are thankfully diverse. It is not that volumes from particular publishers are predictably the same but that they do have family resemblances; this is to be expected as publishers’ editors, like reviewers, will have particular tastes. Especially in a non-popular area like poetry it is good that a number of publishers should co-exist to keep have possibilities in the art.

R.G. Hay’s collection, Love and The Outer World is curious in that it is styled as ‘Selected Poems’ and yet is his first volume. It also comes with an apt sympathetic introduction from Elizabeth Perkins. These curiosities are understandable as Hay is a mature poet (he’s fifty-two) whose work has been regularly appearing in the major magazines and who has a fully developed style.

Poussard’s Outbreak of Peace (Billabong Press, $3.95 pb, 44 pp) is a personal record of the women’s action at Pine Gap in November 1983. It is difficult to say precisely how Poussard achieves the fine balance of political and personal commentary that she does, but her introduction provides a clue. ‘Australians are an urban, shore-hugging people,’ she writes, ‘but in the middle of our urban, shore-hugging consciousness there is a space, a desert. For a people with few myths, the openness and vastness of the Centre holds a hint of liberation.’

New themes, new variations on older ones, and new directions for established authors and artists characterise this selection of picture books. Publishers are to be commended for their willingness to support experiments; if the result is not always wholly successful, the very fact that new talent and new ideas are encouraged is of far greater ultimate importance.

Stories of giants and midgets belong to the folk literature of all cultures; and have been the especial favourites of children, who seem them the dramatisation of some of their own frustrations in an outsize world.

Remember the 1970s? They are already the subject of an anthology of critical writings in Australian art compiled by Paul Taylor. Modestly described on the back cover of Anything Goes as “Australia’s most written-about art critic”, Taylor has assembled some 16 pieces of previously published criticism from magazines, newspapers and exhibition catalogues. In this anthology we meet most of the big names of the seventies’ art criticism in Australia: Terry Smith, Patrick McCaughey, Margaret Plant, Daniel Thomas, Janine Burke and others. Donald Brook’s often turgid writing on Post­Object Art has been omitted though I seem to remember that his criticism was considered important and influential at the time.

National Reconciliation: The speeches of Bob Hawke (selected by John Cook)
by R.J.L. Hawke
William Collins, $6.95 pb, 232p., index,
0 00 636732 I .

For those who wish or need to know what the Great Conciliator has been saying, it’s all here. Neville Wran, in an introduction, claims that the set speech is still important in politics. Perhaps so, but the level of platitude and generalisation in these, as in most, political speeches raises doubts. In speeches ranging from the 1983 policy speech, through speeches on the Franklin Dam Australia’s place in the world, youth employment – he’s for it – immigration and multiculturalism, arms control and disarmament – he’s for them also – to the 1984 National ALP conference, the content is high on self-congratulation, facts and figures, low on argument. The question must be raised – is this lack the fault of the reporting which mediates our politics, concentrating on personalities, on the phrase wrenched out of context and on the policy misrepresented by extremes?

By John McLaren

Incomes and Policy
by Ian Manning
Allen & Unwin, .$19.95, $9.95 pb, 192p., biblio., index,
0 86861 0631; 086861071 2 pb

Author is research fellow with Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research in Melbourne. The book attempts to be a description and an evaluation of the Australian distribution of income in the context of the current debate about policy and incomes.

Patrick Weller
First among Equals – Prime Ministers in Westminster Systems
by Patrick Weller
Allen & Unwin, $14.95. 228 p, biblio, index,
086861 500 5

As well as a consideration of the Westminster system is a succinct survey of Thatcher, Trudeau, Fraser and Muldoon.

The Austraflora Handbook
by Bill Molyneux & Sue Forrest et all
Austraflora Nurseries, Belfast Rd., Montrose Victoria
Distributed by Gordon & Gotch, $46.96 pb, 74 p, illus,
0 959047 409

Austraflora is known to native plant enthusiasts as one of the most comprehensive and longest established specialist nurseries in Australia. Its proprietor, Bill Molyneux, has written widely on native plants and his Native Gardens (co-authored with Ross Macdonald; Nelson, 1983) is an excellent introduction to garden design. As consultant for BP (Aust.) Ltd he has been responsible for service station landscapings that are both practical and imaginative.

The Austraflora Handbook, by a team of writers which also includes Sue Forrester and Roger Stone, has developed from the nursery’s well-known catalogues. An introduction of nine pages on growing native plants is followed by a comprehensive alphabetical listing of over 700 trees, shrubs and climbers. Specialised sections identify groundcovers and climb­ ing and creeping plants. There are also brief listings of plants for gardeners with very specific needs or those wanting only one or two plants to fill gaps. One of these lists is for Australian native plants to be used as cut flowers – an aspect ignored by most other writers in this field.

The comprehensive listing, which is by botanical name, gives popular name, brief description, size of fully-grown plant, growing conditions, and bird attraction. The colour coding of the three main lists is limited to a band colour on the first page of each list; this could have been usefully extended to the tops of all pages in the second and third lists. There is a well-chosen selective bibliography.

Attractive production and a modest price will recommend The Austraflora Handbook for purchase by gardeners who are both beginners and specialists in Australian native plants. Also recommended for public libraries and other appropriate collections.

By Vida Horn

The Australian Scented Garden
by Chris Pirie
Harper & Row, $19.95, 140p, illus, index,
0 06 312059 3

There is much sound advice here for beginners seeking to develop a systematic plan for a year-round scented garden. Pirie properly notes that both colour and perfume are rewarding outcomes of design, and that fragrant plants frequently offer little visual pleasure. Native and exotic are represented in the text and in a splendid set of photographs. The final chapter on pot­pourris provides basic advice on giving some permanence to otherwise transitory pleasures.

By John Anwyl

The Auctioneers
by Carl Ruhen
Ayers & Jame., Heritage Books 5 Alexander St., Crows Nest 2065 $19.95, 160p., illus., index,
0 949256 005

Q. What have Henry Parkes, James Tyrrell, Hardy Wilson and John Norton in common?

A. Their art collections were all auctioned by Lawsons.

James R. Lawson Pty. Ltd. are celebrating their centenary by publication of a history covering the origins, personalities, notable collections and day-to-day work of Sydney’s best-known auctioneers.

Carl Ruhen has made the most of rich source material, and produced a book which is both informative and entertaining. The publishers, Ayers and James, are already known to librarians as the agents for Ulverscroft Large Print books. They have entered the publishing field with an attractively produced book which adds an interesting and readable chapter to Aus­tralian art and social history.

By Vida Horn

Human Growth: Its Source and Potential
by Jim Cairns
Research for Survival P/ L, Box 297, Canberra 2600, no price given , 184p., index,
09592700 3 5

Human Growth looks for the good in humankind and hopes we are about to build a better future on it.

His Green Alternative, however, seems to build on somewhat shaky anthropology, and tendentious authorities.

I cannot be reminded of Doris Lessing’s satirical filth book in her Archives series from which I quote a set piece for students of rhetoric.

What is it that in the past has given birth to sorrow, bred unkindness? Why, only the lack of the will to abolish these things. And now everything has changed, for now we have the will and we have the means…Forward, to happiness and love.
Jim Cairns has the will, I cannot see that he has demonstrated the means.

by Barbara Giles

How will I vote?
Edited by Laurie Oakes
Drummond/ Dove Communications, 60-64 Railway Rd., Blackburn 3130
$9.95 pb, 152 p,
0 85924 353 2

This primer on Australian politics and government gains points for timeliness given the informal vote of December last. However, its advice is pricey at $9.95 for only 151 generously spaced small pages. Blewett, Steele Hall, Ralph Hunt, Chipp and Harradine come to the aid of their parties with shameless 10-20 page puffs.

It is very elementary stuff targeted at school children looking forward to their first trip to the polls.

by John Anwyl

Eamin& a living in the visual arts & crafts In Australia
By James F. Stokes
Hale & Iremonger, $29.95 $14.95 pb, 252 p., illus. index
0 86806 122 0; 0 86806 123 0 pb

The photographed objects chosen for the excellently designed cover of Earning a living in the visual arts & crafts in Australia would, without the title, sum up what the contents are all about thereby obeying the first principle of book presentation – fitness of purpose.

There has been no book written – nor will there ever be – about how to succeed financially working at ·the visual arts and crafts. But, if you’ve made your wealth in this area, James Stokes presents a very useful, exceedingly detailed guide with expert advice about how to manage the multiple complications of legal protection, marketing. pricing of wares your copy­rights, of taxation and the other necessities of what is after all a business.

The advice is thorough and in study terms, perhaps to some. could be heavy going. But the thoughtful contents page together with the index will allow the reader to consult readily a subject of concern. The author, a lecturer in arts and business studies (a quaint corn bination) at Newcastle College of Advanced Education has produced a valuable reference for those who are starting out or, who are already in the business of the visual arts and crafts.

by Vane Lindesay

David Lange
by Vernon Wright
Unwin Books, in association with Port Nicholson Press, NZ, $10.95, 14 p, illus
0 86861 490 X

Written in 1984, the story up to that time of New Zealand’s Gough Whitlam

Alan Marshall’s Battlers
by Alan Marshall
Pan, $4.95 pb, 170 p,
0 330 27058 3

This final collection of Alan Marshall’s work contains some pieces that have appeared before in book form and others, mostly from the thirties, that have only appeared in newspapers before this.

It reminds us, if we needed any reminding, of Marshalls outstanding personal qualities – his humour, courage and intense interest in people – and of how early he committed himself to the cause of the dispossessed in Australia, especially the poor and the blacks.

By Laurie Clancy

Teach Your Child to Swim
by Linda McGill
Rigby, $7.95 pb, 88p., illus,
0 72702033 1

This is one of those publications which feels good (the paper is smooth) and looks good (the photos are clear and instructive).

The book is written simply with an understanding of parental needs, children’s developing motor skills and a practitioner’s appreciation of what takes place when child and water meet. For all the practical guidance to the parent, the book manages to convey a love of swimming for its own and safety’s sake. Parent and child should feel confident with this instructor.

by Ludmilla Forsyth

Labor Essays 1984
edited by Jim Eastwood, John Reeves, John Ryan
Drummond/ Dove communications $14.95 pb, 214 p, index,
0 85924 315 X

This, the fifth volume in an annual series, concentrates on economic, social, and industrial relations issues facing State and Federal Labor governments. There is one chapter on Australia’s relations with Pacific neighbours/

Like its predecessors, this volume deserves to be widely read for its emphasis on practicality and avoidance of utopian fantasises. It is a useful record of a broad range of left of centre opinion on the key items which are or should b high on the 1985 political agenda. It stars a great many hares and may irritate some readers for letting some of them escape detailed scrutiny. While most of the discussion doesn’t result in systematic policy-formation it usually [provides good date set of facts and issues and broadens the repertoire of possible strategies.

by John Anwyl

Bob Brown of the Franklin River
by Peter Thompson
Allen and Unwin, $9.95 pb, 203 p., illus, notes, index,
086861 596 X

The author is a current affairs journalist. His story is that of a shy young man who harnessed public opinion to save a relatively obscure river in Tasmania and was a major contributor to mass demonstrations throughout Australia which were equalled only by the Vietnam demonstrations. This tells in graphic detail how it was done.

by Alex Sheppard

The Islands of Sydney Harbour
by Simon Davies
Hale & Iremonger, $6.95 pb, 88p., illus,
0 86806 187 5; 0 86806 188 3 pb

Who would have thought that there are eight islands in Sydney Harbour? Even more surprising, there were originally five more islands which over the years have been integrated with the mainland.

The history and present-day use of the islands is presented in illustrations and brief text. There is a good bibliography and a rather inadequate map. School and public libraries will need this book for both school assignments and for general readership. It would also be a welcome gift for both Sydneysiders and tourists. Acquisitions librarians please note: there are both a hardback and a paperback edition but the publishers have supplied the price for the paperback only.

by Vida Horn

Double Depression
by Ian Watson
George Allen & Unwin, $15.95, $7.95 pb, 160 p., index,
0 86861 580 3; 0 86861 588 9 pb

When my middle-class-brought-up children say, ‘It’s alright for you, you didn’t have to worry about getting a job’, I do feel I was part of the Lucky Generation. When I read the case studies presented by Ian Watson in this book, I recognise what my children don’t recognise and that is that they are part of a luckier group than they realise.

Double Depression is a well-chosen title. The book contains a series of case studies focusing on ‘Schooling, Unemployment and Family Life in the Eighties’ – its subtitle.

These studies are taken from Watson’s thesis in the social science area and made accessible by a change in style and layout (a necessity he acknowledges).

The aim of the book is ‘to offer to a wider audience ... conversations and ... insights’. What the book also gives is a clear and unjargon commentary and an examination of the ideology inherent in the conversations. The writer also reveals his sympathies, his humanist concern for those doubly depressed.

by Ludmilla Forsyth

Reading the Country
by Kim Benterrak, Stephen Muecke, Paddy Roe
Fremantle Arts Centre Press, $29.50 pb, 252 p., illus,
0 909144 88 5

In 1982 Fremantle Press issued Paddy Roe’s Gularabulu, an extremely sensitive rendition of several tales offered by this Aboriginal racounteur.

Now, in a more lavish format, the relationship between this Broome stock­man and his land has been teased out, further elaborated, and more fully con­ceptualised by the unobtrusive use of European intellectual constructs. The result is a powerful account of the Aboriginal sense of place, a valuable addition to the growing library of books documenting the diversity of cultural responses to the Australian landscape.

Highly recommended.

by Robert Pascoe

Daisy Chains, War, then Jazz
by Kathleen Mangan
Hutchinson, $19.95, 204 p., illus,
0 09148620 3

Kathleen Mangan, the youngest daughter of Frederick McCubbin, has written a charming and lively memoir of her child­hood and youth in Melbourne from 1907 to the mid-Twenties.

This gentle, good-humoured book will be welcomed by readers who enjoy the recall of a past era with which they can identify.

by Vida Horn

Mentone: The Place for a School
by Pauline B. Burren
Hyland House, $21.50, 17 4p.,illus., index,
0 908090 72 2

Burren has adapted her University thesis on Mentone Girls’ Grammar School into a book whose appearance, price, and size will appeal to a captive audience of actual and prospective ‘old girls’.

It deserves a somewhat wider audience for it records the grit, co-operation, imagination, ingenuity, and luck necessary to ensure the survival of tee-playing second league grammar schools before salvation came in the form of State aid.

Burren is careful to provide some account of the educational philosophies in vogue in the school at various times, and to give sufficient social backdrop to add perspective to the internal dramas.

by John Anwyl.

Badges of Labour; Bannen of Pride
by Anne Stephen and Andrew Reeves
Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences and Allen and Unwin, $17.95, 8 p, each page illus, colour and b&w,
0 86861 510 X

A glorious history of the banners carried by major Australian trade unions in various marches, with notes illustrating them and their long histories and traditions. A marvellous work.

by Alex Shappard

Poetry
by Barbara Giles
Lines by a Woman Scorned and other Verse
by Anne Taylor
$00 pb, 15 p,

It seems you’ll need a clairvoyant to find this book. Don’t worry, it’s neat but not gaudy, literate but not lush; rather sad verse that, its purpose accomplished, should have stayed with the writer.

Soft Lounges
by Antonia Bruns, John Jenkins (eds)
Fringe Network,
201 Brunswick St., Fitzroy 3065 $6.00 pb, 156 p,
0 959 2402 1 7

I’m glad the Fringe anthology describes its contents as ‘new writings’ rather than ‘new writing’. It is much the mixture as before, and as usual for anthologies some work is good, some not so good, some witless.

Style isn’t to be assumed like a cloak, but stems from the original impulse, and the further it is from ‘straight’ the sooner it is dated. Ania Walwicz, once impactful, is here imitating herself, to borrow her words it’s a leedle oolee oolee. Antoni Jach gives us four pages print-solid, which· is too, too hard to read.

Let’s look elsewhere. Peter Lyssiotis, clever photo-montage, I like the waterfall, the dive-bombing birds. Likewise mixed print and photo from Ernie Altoff. Carmel Bird, evocative, amusing mix of old advertisements and material information in. Every Home Should Have a Cedar Chest. Striking poems from Antonia Bruns, komninos zervos (e.e. cummings, that lower-case highbrow did that in the twenties), John Howard, and others. Interesting graphics, Diana Corr, Ian Paradine. Good stories in current mode from Jeff Maynard, Clare Fleming, and Robert Whyte tongue-in-cheek. In fact, the anthology is overall a great move forward from the first.

Just read the blurb, though. Innovative? Bone up on the past whoever wrote that.

Fringe Network is a Melbourne organisation which organises an annual festival of arts events outside the mainstream of cultural activity. Its newsletter provides a guide to countercultural activities, and this, its second annual anthology, records some of the written consequences of the festival.

Zoetropes: Poems 1972-82
by Bill Manhire
George Allen & Unwin, $9.95 pb, 80 p,
0 86861 688 5

This book contains selections from three previous books plus eight new poems. Many of the earlier ones are like the poems of a sane Plath, the same easy control of tone and rhythm, an effortless structure which nevertheless makes large demands on the reader. Sometimes, as in On Originality, he uses a poem-long metaphor, the poet here is a murderous thief who plunders each poet in turn.

Sometimes he is utterly simple, using the worn coins of daily speech, often in words of one syllable, as in the Elaboration ...

There was a way out of here
it went off in the night
licking its lips
The door flaps like a great wing I make fists at the air
and long to weaken
Ah to visit you
is the plain thing,
and I shall not come to it.

The more recent poems are longer, but no more fully explained, he trusts his reader to bring them to the concentration these poems, each one different, deserve. By turns witty, colloquial, compassionate, contemplative, this is a poetry to read and read again.

The Inland Sea
by John Jenkins
Brunswick Hills Press,
80 Wilson St., Brunswick 3055
$5.95 pb, 48 p,
0 9590929 0 0

An uneven book. Much that’s pretentious, flim-flam or banal. It would certainly take the Astra choir to lift Entropy, with its listings of the usual, to ·get this poem Flying and flying, even if All these things/have little wings.

There is a flavour of the sixties here, with the emphasis on objects as definers of the ordinary. Jenkins should lift his game into the eighties, emphasise the sur in the surreal. Nice cover, and the ‘Inland Sea’ one of the best poems. in the book.

Contemporary Indonesian Poetry
edited and translated by Harry Aveling
UQP $12.95 pb, 262 p
07022 0932 5

This collection of now not entirely conemporary Indonesian poetry is reissued by Queensland University Press in a slightly smaller format.

It would interest others than students for its inclusion – approximately one third of the book – of Rendra’s social consciousness poems.

Come Down Cunderang
by John Millett
South Head Press, The Market Place, Berimma, NSW. 2577
$7.50 pb, 116 p, 0 909185 20 4

Subscribers to Poetry Australia nowadays have to accustom themselves to the fact that they’ll get, not regular anthologies, but also a mixed bag of poets, some fine, some just what they don’t want.

This just falls what midway, it isn’t a patch on Tail Arse Charlie being an artifact rather than a living entity, full of Irishry, sexual giants with ‘jewels in their semen’, men and pigs always ‘doing it’, ‘wide women full of sap’, the lilt of Irish laughter, endless lists, and horses that are apparently unique in that they have ‘gene pools going back many lifetimes’. Hydromel, sounding so much sicklier than mead, drips on many a page, but hunt around, you’ll find some poems that are sober.

The are Irish influence has been strong in Australia, any student of language knows how much we’ve stolen their idiom to enliven our speech and in more important ways we’ve absorbed a lot of Irishry, but Come Down Cunderang smacks of the stage rather than life.

Everything is Relative
by Pauline Wardleworth
WAV Publications, Box 545,
Norwood 5067
$8 pb, 92 p,
095911861 6

Pauline Wardleworth has a gift for words and images, a gift which can at times strangle a poem and drown it in honey.

In her best poems she succeeds admirably, controlling her two-edged tool and speaking with a voice both compas­sionate and shrewd. Among the poems which most impressed me were the poems about her father, The Guardian and largely, To The Poets in my Head, a poem most poets have tried to write and found almost impossible.

by Barbara Giles,

Poetry Australia – Twenty-one years
South Head Press
$25 (five issues), 85 p
090918521 2

This excellent issue, to celebrate 21 years of continuous publication, contains 35 poems, mostly by well westablished Australian poets. One essay deals with the contributions of the distinguished printing firm, Edwards and Shaw, alas now closed down.

by Alec Sheppard

History
by Robert Pascoe
Families in Colonial Australia
edited by Patricia Grimshaw, Chris McConville & Ellen McEwen
Allen Unwin, $24.95, $12.95 pb, 227 p., illus., notes, index,
0 86861 513 7; 0 86861 521 8 pb.

Sixteen essays by social historians, extend­ing over all mainland States covering the span of the colonial period from the convict period to the early twentieth century.

A Place of Light & Learning
by Malcolm I. Thornis
UQP, $40, 430 p.,illus, index,
0 7022 1797 2

The University of Queensland turns 75 this year, and one of St Lucia’s historians has put together this readable and large tome. Australian universities have been well documented by historians: this one-avoids the institutional approach favoured by Alexander in his history of the UW A, and takes up the issues of student culture not always understood as a vital part of campus history.

With a cast of characters including Sir Raphael , Cilento, Zelman Cowan, Arch­bishop Duhig,’ Vince Gair, Humphrey McQueen, Fred Paterson and Sir Fred Schonell, this history brings together some interesting controversies. In 1971 the Vice­Chancellor expressed ‘deep concern at the possible threat to fundamental civil liberties’ in Queensland; the same Premier whose government occasioned this concern was to be awarded a St Lucia doctorate in more recent times (after this book would have gone to press).

Dictionary of Western Australians 1829-1914
Volume 4, Part I, A-K
by Rica Erickson
University of Western Australia Press
$30, 920 p
0 85564 229 7

The fourth volume in a monumental exercise in prosopography (collective biography). It is based on a cross-tabulation of all available documentary sources. A sample entry:

ABECCO Signor Raffaele & Madame. Were in W.A. (arr. or dep?) on Sea Ripple (PG) which was loading sandalwood for Singapore. A harpist who entertained Perth audiences for 2 years. Singer of popular American ballards of the day. Was a better harpist than singer. Toured country districts.

The work of many dedicated enthusiasts, this project is a basic reference tool for colonial Western Australian history. Rica Erickson is to be congratulated again for her patient endurance with this Dictionary.

The Ridge: A history of Middle Ridge State School 1884-1984
by Rae Pennycuick
Published by the Parents and Citizens Association, Middle Park State School, Spring St, Toowoomba, 4350
136 p, illus,
09590774 0 5

An intimate portrait of the school serving the locality on the outskirts of Toowoomba which began as a German enclave.

An appendix lists the children who graduated from this school, who’s surnames yield glues to the gradual assimilation of the local population and the post-war cultural diversity of the area.

The Devil’s Wilderness
edited by Alan E. J. Andrews
Blubber Head Press, $195 (leatherbound), $95 (numbered and signed)., 150 p, illus, biblio, index,
0 908528 12 4

In the same year as the Castle Hill convict rebellion, botanist George Caley was making his own attempt to break free from the confines of the Sydney penal settlement, heading west in an attempt to transverse the Blue Mountains.

Engineer and bushwalker Alan Andrews has performed a meticulous editorial job with Caley’s journal in this elegantly printed limited edition. A amass-market edition would appeal to bushwalkers who wanted to follow in Caley’s footsteps through this still untamed environment, full of mystery and beauty.

Death is a Good Solution
by A.W, Baker
UQP $40, 224 p, biblio, index
0 7022 1685 2

A precise comprehensive and authoritative guide to the literary depiction of convicts in the various penal colonies. Baker begins with an account of the British genre of criminal biography, touching upon Gay’s Beggar’s Opera and Fielding’s Jonathan Wild and proceeds to Kingsley’s Geoggrey Hamlyn, Clark’s Natural Life, and O’Reilly’s Moondyne and White’s Voss.

The tabular presentation of criminal themes will offend some litterateurs but students of the convict experience will find this an invaluable guide.

Charles Hotham: A Biography
by Shirley Roberts
MUP, $22.90, 202 p, biblio, index,

Hotham’s reputation was tarnished by Eureka, but he has now found a biographer concerned to laud his achievements in other parts of the world, particularly his interventions in the slave trade and in Argentina.

This biography lacks the depth and complexity of recent, professional efforts such as the biographies of Arthur and of Darling, but is at once very readable and accessible. Roberts is the Director of Radiology at Melbourne’s Prince Henry’s Hospital.

The Biased Boundary Umpire and other Riverian Reminiscences
by John Warren
Spectrum Publications. PO Box 75, Richmond 3121
$8.50 pb, 196 p,
086786 065 0

Two dozen vignettes of the life in the Riverina a generation ago, told by a woolclasser latterly a football administrator. Warren has an eye for the amusing anecdote, and his text is nicely complimented by Kirsty Hough’s black-and-white illustrations.

Stories range from fun and games in the local football matches, memories of the bush cinema, to adventures with the Italian Prisoners of War assigned to the family property.

Ralph Darling: A governor maligned
by Brian H. Fletcher
OUP $35, 474 p, biblio, index,
0 19 554564 8

With 120 ages of footnotes and bibliography, this is an exhaustive biography of this early Governor of New South Wales (1825-31). In its genre this is a major achievement, narrating in great detail the public life of an archetypal colonial administrator/ These interested in the social history of the convict regime and the early colonists may be disappointed by this book’s concentration on life viewed from Government House.

Coal in Queensland
by R.L Whitmore
UQP $30, 338 p, illus, biblio, index,
0 7022 1759 X

Whitmore, professor of mining and metallurgical engineering at the University of Queensland: here the story is taken from 1875 to Federation.

It is a technical and economic history, enlivened by good photographs, charts and maps, but not assaying the social history of the mining workforce and their families. Industrial archaeologists and economic historians will, however, find this work useful.

by Robert Pascoe

Re-issues
Snow on the Saltbush
by Geoffrey Dutton
Penguin, $9.95, 311 p, index, illus,
0 14 007590 9

Originally issues as a Viking hardback, this now appears in paperback format. Reviewed in the October 1984 ABR, Dutton’s book is a personal account of the struggle he was involved in to free Australian writing from the blight of British imperialism.

The Young Wife
by David Martin
Sun Books, $4.95 pb, 238 p,
07251 00010 9

David Martin’s unpretentious novel has stood up very well since its first published in 1962. This story of a young Greek girl who emigrates to Australia to marry a man chosen for her, and the ensuing tragedy that occurs, is well ahead of its time. Though stiffly written, its relevance is even greater now than when it was first published, and it polled extremely well in our competition for the best 10 Australian novels since 1945.

by Laurie Clancy

One Continuous Picnic
by Michael Symore
Penguin, $9.95 pb, 278 p, biblio, index,
0 14 00 7167 9 (Reprint)

In this original and fascinating approach to cultural history, Michael Symons argues that Australia has a uniquely uninteresting and tasteless cuisine, owing to the lack of any peasant agrarian tradition, as well as the overuse of chemicals and the mechanisation in the food industry.

Perhaps because of his Sydney orientation, Symons does tend to overstate his case. Yes tomatoes often are hard-skinned, apples waxed, and bread sliced and cardboardy but there are more exceptions than he allows. Still, the reader will never swallow a vegemite sandwich as comfortably again.

by Katharine L. Rhodes

Cole’s Funny Puzzle Book
edited by Cole Turnley
Cole Publications, 3 Creswick St, Hawthorn, 3122
$7.95, 96 p,
0909900 13 2

That affectionally regarded Aussie institutions Cole’s Funny Picture Book was first published well over 100 years ago by the quite remarkable E.W. Cole of Bourke Street, Melbourne. And, if proof were needed that ‘funny’ was relative, then the old editions of the famous rainbow covered books supply it. In a gothic fashion the illustrations could be just as scary, as funny, to a child.

The grandson of E.W. Cole has added to the two original ‘funny’ books a third, some years ago. And now he presents a further Cole’s book of funny puzzles and jokes attractively designed, compiled, and in the main we agree funny – well, at least to children: ‘Here’s a bright idea! A what?’ (picture of a horned animal) ‘A bright eyed deer’

Old steel-engraved illustrations join other presumably drawn for this edition, but the old ‘feel’ is persevered along with the original spirit – ‘here is the farmer, can you find his pig?’

The book opens flat enough for children to enjoy the puzzles which are made more attractive by the decorative use of colour/ And not make it too frustrating for the youngers, some of the more difficult puzzles are answered by a ‘crib’.

Here is the book. Can you find $7.95?
by Vane Lindesay

‘What do you reckon this is? Some kind of joke’ This final ironic cadence to Bill Reed’s sixth novel, with its upbeat question asked of death and the literary establishment, is never resolved; that isn’t Reed’s way. In a grand guignol of a novel, ostensibly about the repercussions of publishing an expose of crime bosses in New South Wales (which Reed actually did as the publisher of Australian books for Macmillan), he sets out to linguistically conceal the agony of caring for an elusive humanity he finds alien and macabre.

This book covers an important historical era in Aboriginal–European/Australian relationships. It describes in admirable detail the negotiations between the Pitjantjatjara people of north-west South Australia and their advisors on one side, and the South Australian government and bureaucratic departments on the other during the long hard battle to obtain title deeds to their land.

It is of interest to those of us who have continuing interest in land rights negotiations throughout Australia, but its value will not be truly appreciated until future historians piece together the situations faced and the tactics employed by the Pitjantjatjara Council. Government departments and the individuals involved are identified. Also described are deputations and demonstrations that were part of the negotiations, made doubly difficult by changes in government – Liberal to Labor, and back to Liberal again during those negotiations.