The Australian Identity---Part 4 (Final)
November 30th 2006 06:05
As well as Franklin, another author to capture a snapshot of Australian-ness was Louis Stone, with the 1911 novel Jonah. Set on the streets of Sydney, the story follows the life of a street-smart larrikin who gives up his rogue lifestyle as 'captain of the push' (boss of the gang) to marry his pregnant girlfriend and start a shoe repair and sales business, which becomes highly successful. The larrikin, alonside the bushmen, are core Australian identities. The larrikin verse of C.J. Dennis followed Stone with the Songs of a Sentimental Bloke in 1915, and The Moods of Ginger Mick in 1916 as Mick joins the ANZACS in the birth of another Australian identity, that of our brave Aussie warriors, before dying a heroic death at Gallipoli. The humour of the heavily inflected colloquial slang a great souce of moral for the Diggers on the Front Lines.
Two other novelists to follow Franklin and Stone with their own images of Australia are Katherine Prichard with Coonardoo, and Kylie Tennant's The Battlers. Coonardoo was published in 1929, and follows the fortunes of an outback station and the small Aboriginal tribe camped in the vicinity. With dominant themes of love--love of a mother for her son; forbidden love between white man and black woman--as well as the treatment of the Aborigine by white settlers and vice versa. It's a courageous novel wrote at a time when like women, the Aboriginal people were invisible agents in Australian history. The Battlers, published in 1941, tells of a band of nomadic workers traipsing the countryside in search of work. With themes of bush VS city life, marriage and responsibility, and a life of poverty on the road, it's a sobering look at Australia in the grip of the Great Depression.
In summarising this series, much more could be said about the works covered and their contribution to Australian literature. However, this series is about core identity formation, and for this reason alone I have overlooked other classic works like Baynton or White for example, or the poets of the 1920-50 era like Slessor or the Jindyworobaks, who were accused of grafting on aboriginal terms for added authenticity.
The convict, the pioneer, the bushmen/larrikin, and the Anzacs, all are true and enduring Australian identities. One has to look no further than the Opening Ceremony of the 2000 Olympics, or more recently, the funeral of media mogul Kerry Packer, where Packer was said to think of himself as a larrikin capitalist. These identities are recognised internationally as being distinctly Australian.
NOTES
Goodwin, K, A History of Australian Literature, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1986.
Dutton, G, The Literature of Australia, Victoria, Penguin, 1976.
Grant, et. al. (eds), An Anthology of Australian Verse and Song, Perth, Black Swan Press, 1993.
PW
The convict, the pioneer, the bushmen/larrikin, and the Anzacs, all are true and enduring Australian identities. One has to look no further than the Opening Ceremony of the 2000 Olympics, or more recently, the funeral of media mogul Kerry Packer, where Packer was said to think of himself as a larrikin capitalist. These identities are recognised internationally as being distinctly Australian.
NOTES
Goodwin, K, A History of Australian Literature, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1986.
Dutton, G, The Literature of Australia, Victoria, Penguin, 1976.
Grant, et. al. (eds), An Anthology of Australian Verse and Song, Perth, Black Swan Press, 1993.
PW
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