September 2010 Issue 102

Editor: Richard Walsh
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 23 November 2009
RRP: $29.99 AUD
Format: Paperback 308 pp

John Paul Newbury grew up in Cronulla in the southern suburbs of Sydney. In 1986, he moved to Fremantle in Western Australia where he practised as a teacher for twenty-three years. He has returned to dedicate more time to his writing. He now lives with his family in the peaceful Southern Highlands of New South Wales. John says it is the perfect place to work on his dreams.  He is pleased to have joined the Bonzer! congregation of writers. John is Jan and Paul’s eldest son.

Pick this book up and think, another anthology, what will make this one worth more than any other. Fortunately, you have the pleasurable task of reviewing it and thus the incentive to find out. What will convince you that Richard Walsh tells the truth about the collection being essential? Does it have a fair share of Banjo Paterson and Henry Lawson material? Yes, it does, with 16% of the list belonging to the former. Does it have Faces in the Street by Lawson? Yes, it does, give it another tick. What about the early poets? Yes, it has Adam Lindsay Gordon and Henry Kendall. You think, great start, and it only gets better.

Read the blurb and you see that it contains the lighter end of the verse spectrum, even doggerel, which you find out refers to comic verse of irregular measure. You find plenty of the latter type adds to the enjoyment.

Further inspection uncovers the prolific C J Dennis, who wrote over 4000 poems, mostly in the Australian dialect of the time. Some of his verse for children is noteworthy. Many other verse exponents make these pages, some known, others not, some long, some short, a quatrain from a convict’s tattoo, which you find out later from a radio interview is one of the editor’s favourites as it makes real the heartbreak of convict life.

Richard Walsh fascinates you, knowledgeable with a slice of the larrikin, even a rebellious anarchist, especially in his youth. He has held many lofty positions in the publishing game, such as founding editor of the satirical magazine OZ, managing director and publisher at Angus & Robertson and head of Australian Consolidated Press, even edited the Bulletin. He is well-placed to edit such a collection and has done a fine job with the final product. You particularly like the conceptual format, not having to be strictly chronological.

Walsh believes that Lawson is yang to Paterson’s yin, realistic socialist versus the romantic bushman who wrote the majority of his poems out of an office in Sydney. Both have bush credentials. They see the world through different eyes. This is made clear in the great Bulletin debate, a public wrestling match between the two men played within the pages of the Bulletin, a tit for tat that lasted until they ran out of material. Unbeknown to many this public battle was a setup initiated by Lawson in happy consort with his romantic balladeer colleague in Paterson. Apparently, it was all a ruse to make money, and as history tells you, Lawson had much trouble when it came to money and the law. Paterson helped him in both.

You find little female content, one being Caroline Carleton who wrote The Song of Australia. Walsh collects this anthology to represent the first hundred years or so of the English-speaking exiles, and for the time, the males had a louder voice.

It includes many pieces of work that made the pages of the Bulletin under the initial guiding hand of J F Archibald and John Haynes. This publication kept the White Australia banner until the sixties. It was a major egalitarian publication, amongst the colonials, which published many submissions from people around the country who had a chance to have their say, promoting typical Australian mateship and anti-establishment viewpoints.

You love the notes that help the deciphering, makes for accessibility and if anything you wish it had more. One important note concerns the dubbing of C J Dennis as the next in line to have his picture on our currency. And one more, most of the memorable work of Paterson came out when he was younger, newspaper editor, war correspondent, nearly all but Waltzing Matilda, the writing of which is a good story in itself.

Walsh dives into the debate about the national anthem, finds banal Advance Australia Fair and The Song of Australia, both written for sopranos, child choirs, and not sporting male baritones. Read the book to find out more interesting historical points that encompass such aspects of the changing culture within colonial history.

This book is worthwhile for any Australian library, one to pick up from time to time to page surf, or form the basis of wider research, a valuable addition to any school booklist, one that every Australian should get to know. All anthologies have critics. You imagine this one has less than most.

Reviewed by John Paul Newbury

This entry was posted by jpnewbury on Monday, February 1st, 2010 at 12:00 am and is filed under Book Reviews. You can be notified of any comments on this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment in the box at the bottom of the post.

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