Writing the Nation

C ross
ultures
Readings in the Post / Colonial

Literatures in English

97
Series Editors

Gordon Collier †Hena Maes–Jelinek Geoffrey Davis

(Giessen) (Liège) (Aachen)
 Writing the Nation
Patrick White and the Indigene

Cynthia vanden Driesen

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2009

Cover design: Cynthia vanden Driesen

The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of

“ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for
documents - Requirements for permanence”.

ISBN: 978-90-420-2516-5
©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam – New York, NY 2009
Printed in The Netherlands
 For Ian
&
For Rohan
 Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ix

Introduction xi
1 Recovery From Amnesia 1
2 Voss 29
3 A Fringe of Leaves 79
4 Riders in the Chariot 117
Conclusion 149

Appendix 177
Works Cited 193
Index 201
 Acknowledgements

My warmest thanks are due to Bill Ashcroft (University of New South

Wales/University of Hong Kong), who, with his customary generosity,
found the time amidst his many interests to critique most helpfully some of
the theoretical bases of this study. In one sense, this book sees the culmina-
tion of a direction given to my study of White’s works that germinated in a
discussion with Bill at the first national conference on the work of Patrick
White, organized at Flinders University several years ago; though the doc-
toral dissertation I was then engaged in took a quite different direction. John
Barnes (La Trobe University) and Adrian Mitchell (University of Sydney)
have also provided timely assistance in this, as in so many other projects, for
which I am genuinely grateful. Thanks also to Alan Lawson (University of
Queensland), whose brief discussions with me of his own critical work on
White I found extremely useful.
Professor Hena Maes–Jelinek (University of Liège) provided me with
much-valued guidance, and her generous friendship and interest are ac-
knowledged here with fond remembrance.
My thanks are also due to a small group of academics – and friends – who
met at a conference convened at the National University of Singapore in
December 2005 on the theme of “Literatures in English and their Centres:
Perceiving from the Inside”: Professor Wimal Dissanayake (University of
Hawai’i) and the playwright Ernest MacIntyre (both old acquaintances from
halcyon undergraduate days spent at the University of Ceylon, Peradeniya);
and Julie Mehta (University of Toronto), who encouraged me to believe that
concentration on just this one aspect of the work of Patrick White could be a
sufficiently rewarding project. Thanks also to Professor Satendra Nandan
(University of Fiji and formerly of the University of Canberra), fellow-
x WRITING THE NATION ]

enthusiast of the work of Patrick White whose interest has also been an
incentive in the writing of this book.
I could not have wished for a more meticulous and erudite editor than
Gordon Collier.
My thanks to Edith Cowan University for granting me the study leave
which enabled me to complete this project. To Julia Gross, Librarian, Faculty
of Education and Arts, Edith Cowan University, special thanks are due for
ready assistance in procuring valuable resources at short notice from the
University of Queensland.
To my family and friends, particularly my husband Ian and my son
Rohan, for help in matters academic, technical, personal, in ways too numer-
ous to mention, my unending thanks.

]^
 Introduction

I N ACCORDANCE with Edward Said’s dictum regarding the impor-

tance of recording the critic’s “inventory of traces” as a necessary pre-
lude (a means of declaring one’s speaking position), some personal
details are apposite in the introduction to this study.1 Arriving in Nigeria,
West Africa (from my native Sri Lanka) several years ago, as part of the
exodus of Western-trained academics to overseas universities caused by
post-Independence nationalist developments in the island, I found that im-
mersion in the burgeoning writing from that region of the world provided
me with an invaluable introduction to the local culture. When the next stage
in our personal odyssey brought our family to Australia, I looked forward to
a similar induction into Australian culture through an acquaintance with Aus-
tralian literature. Patrick White’s The Tree of Man provided this for me; the
effect of that first acquaintance was not dissimilar to that Gordon Collier
describes as his own first reaction to White: “I was spellbound by him.”2 The
effect was so overwhelming that I realised I needed to bide my time till I
could find the time and opportunity to embark on a doctoral study of all his
novels. While, for Collier, it was the language, “the almost palpable density
and enigmatic ductus of the language,” that moved him, for me it was the
nature and dimensions of the task White seemed embarked on as a novelist.
My initial study focused on White as a novelist engaged in the singular chal-
lenge of compelling an increasingly secular culture to recognize the impor-
tance of the “unprofessed factor” of religion, of a belief in the existence of a

1 Edward W. Said, Orientalism (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978): 25–26.

2 Gordon Collier, The Rocks and Sticks of Words: Style, Discourse and Narrative Structure in the
Fiction of Patrick White (Cross / Cultures 5; Amsterdam & Atlanta G A : Rodopi, 1992): 1.
xii WRITING THE NATION ]

transcendental world and all the complexities of the challenge that such a
task entailed for the novelist.3
On concluding that study, I felt obliged to explore in some way his unique
position in the Australian literary context, particularly the strangely polarizing
influence his works seemed to exercise on his critics – attitudes of deepest
enthusiasm and awe alongside expressions of impatience, resentment, and
even ridicule. Here I found Jung’s theory of the ‘great’ artist indispensable,
and the outcome of this was the article that is appended to the present study,
exploring White’s career as a paradigm of the “great artist” as outlined in
Jungian teaching: the great artist’s capacity to answer the deep-seated psychic
needs of his people. In a secular age, he fills a vacuum in their spiritual/
religious needs.4
Later, in the course of my teaching of Australian and other postcolonial
literature, it was impressed on me that White’s work also contributed in
many different ways to the writing of the nation. The spiritual needs of a
newly emergent nation such as the Australian must also comprehend its con-
tinual urge towards self-definition. This study explores only one very limited
– but important – aspect of that challenge: white Australia’s dealings with the
indigenous people of the land. There is, of course, a great deal more that can
be mined in the subterranean treasures of the White text with regard to the
(post)colonial experience of Australians – the relationship to their British and
European origins and the imperial influences, the evaluation of the ‘medi-
ocrity’ of suburban Australian culture along with its potential – the genius of
the landscape, the evolution of an Australian idiom, and much more besides.
In a personal note to the present author, Bill Ashcroft expressed the view
that
Overall, I think that the argument about settler colonialism is a good one and
could constitute a very strong element in the book. This dimension is regularly
left out of postcolonial discussion and you need to emphasise the extent to
which the settler colonies are the demonstrations par excellence of colonial
ambivalence. White is very good at bringing in the colonial ambivalence and cul-
tural cringe into his novels, not only where aborigines are concerned.5

3 Cynthia vanden Driesen, “Patrick White and the ‘Unprofessed Factor’” (doctoral dis-
sertation, University of Western Australia, 1985).
4 Cynthia vanden Driesen, “Jung, the Artist and Society,” St. Mark’s Review 119 (Sept-

ember 1984): 22–31.

5 Email to author, 27 June 2007.
] Introduction xiii

While my formal education both at secondary school and university re-

flected the bias of all postcolonized subjects (of an immersion in the canoni-
cal texts of English literature), my own life-experience of having been born
and brought up in an ex-colonized land, my travel, and my residence and
teaching in other countries have all predisposed me to observe the breadth
and depth of the colonial experience in so many regions of the world and
prompt me to research and teach the multi-faceted aspects of postcolonial
literature. Having lived and taught in Australia now for several decades, I
have come to realize that there is a real need to position the study of Austra-
lian literature much more emphatically within the larger field of postcolonial
literature and at the same time to highlight the difference in the challenge be-
fore the writers in the erstwhile settler colonies. Here, as in the study of all
postcolonial literature, the importance and relevance of the ideas and theo-
ries of Edward Said cannot be sufficiently emphasized, even though Said, for
all his intimate familiarity with the literatures of the world, paid relatively little
attention to writing emanating from the so-called settler cultures.
It is unfortunate for the settler cultures of the world and, indeed, for the
area of postcolonial inquiry in general that Edward Said, the great cultural
theorist, was only able to accord them the most cursory attention before
death cut short his intellectual and spiritual engagement with the world,
leaving behind for us his immense contribution to knowledge of how inter-
action between peoples, cultures, and power operates. One disappointed re-
viewer, Greg Dening, notes of Culture and Imperialism that Said mentions just
two Australian books which “inspired” him: Robert Hughes’s “magisterial”
The Fatal Shore and Paul Carter’s “brilliantly speculative” The Road to Botany
Bay. Dening’s view is that

They inspired him because they gave him access to ‘resistance’ literature from
the other side of empire. The side had been missing in Orientalism. Indeed the
disempowering and fatal model of empire left little room for a regenerative pro-
cessual model of culture that allowed one to explain the continuities and
modernities of the colonised.6

His feeling is that the names of so many writers are simply listed, “like credits
at the end of a film,” and give little sense of Said’s having responded to them
in any depth. He concludes that this could be due to the short gestation and

6
Greg Dening, “Disembodied Artifacts: Edward Said’s Culture and Imperialism,” Southern
Review 9.1 (1994): 81.
xiv WRITING THE NATION ]

the fragmented origins of the book, which grew out of various lectures,
seminars, and articles. And while he explains that “our disappointment is
partly a consequence of the constant demand we put on writers of genius to
be spectacular,” he still believes that “literary criticism should be literature,
should be crafted as a poem. Theory needs narration as much as empires.”
Nevertheless, he admits that, even in the naming of the works, Said “takes us
some way down this path or has shown us the way to go.”7 Said has indeed
enabled others to continue his labours in the field.
This study explores the significance of the Aboriginal presence in three
selected texts from the oeuvre of Patrick White: Voss (1957), Riders in the
Chariot (1961), and A Fringe of Leaves (1976). It is predicated on the thesis that
each of these texts interrogates European culture’s denigration of the non-
European Other as embedded in the discourse of orientalism, so incisively
identified in Said’s classic work of that name. Orientalism grew out of the
contact with indigenous peoples from all over the world – the result of colo-
nial domination and the assumptions developing from it about the innate
superiority of the European. Terry Goldie, in his own study of the represen-
tation of the indigene in New Zealand, Australia, and Canada, cites Said’s
work by way of preamble:

What is important, Said suggests in Orientalism, is not the approximation of pres-

ence which seems to be the intention of western discussions of eastern culture,
but rather the conformity of works to an ideology that Said and others have
called orientalism. Thus, he is studying, not the reality the works seem to re-
present […] the truths they claim to depict, but the reality of the texts and their
ideology, and of the ideology of the authors and their culture. Creative literature
is but one of the more visible examples of the reification of the indigene,
something which permeates our culture.
Behind this reality of an ideology lies another reality, of a history of invasion
and oppression. In all three countries, indigenous people were forced to suc-
cumb, to the needs of British imperial expansion […]. The overwhelming fact
of the oppression awarded semiotic control to the invaders and since then, the
image of “them” has been “ours.”8

7Greg Dening, “Disembodied Artifacts,” 82.

8Terry Goldie, Fear and Temptation: The Image of the Indigene in Canadian, Australian and
New Zealand Literatures (Kingston, Montreal & London: McGill–Queen’s U P , 1989): 5.
] Introduction xv

In Goldie’s view, numerous contemporary texts imply the “putative super-

iority of the indigene” (partly due, perhaps, to the forces of decolonization
gaining ground in the second half of the twentieth century and a re-thinking
of attitudes to race), but he acknowledges that, “as Said suggests, the positive
and negative sides of the image are but swings of one and the same pen-
dulum.”9 Said’s own analysis showed that while the earliest orientalists had
begun by acknowledging oriental spirituality and longevity, such over-estima-
tion was followed by a counter-response of total negativity:

The major component in European culture is precisely what made that culture
hegemonic both in and outside Europe: the idea of European identity as a
superior one in comparison with the idea of all the non-European peoples and
cultures. There is in addition the hegemony of European ideas about the Orient,
themselves reiterating European superiority over Oriental backwardness […].
In a quite constant way, Orientalism depends for its strategy on this flexible
positional superiority which puts the Westerner in a whole series of possible
relationships with the Orient without ever losing him the upper hand. And why
should it have been otherwise, especially during the period of extraordinary
European ascendancy from the late Renaissance to the present?10

Said speaks earlier of the “sheer knitted-together strength of Orientalist dis-

course, its very close ties to the enabling socio-economic and political institu-
tions, and its redoubtable durability.”11 It is this “redoubtable durability” of
orientalist perceptions that is inevitably part of the inherited European cul-
ture of white Australia. British attitudes to the indigene in Australia and, in-
deed, to all people of colour in the regions they colonized were intimately
bound up with their attitudes to the African. There are many references to
the Negro in the early discussion of the Australian Aborigine, such as Lieu-
tenant Tench’s account of the episode where an Aboriginal group mistake an
African in the English contingent to be one of themselves, or the early de-
scriptions that likened the colour of their skins to that of the Negro.12
In my use of the term ‘indigene’ in the title of this work and in the recur-
ring references throughout this study, I invoke a term which is not generally

9 Goldie, Fear and Temptation, 10.

10 Edward Said, Orientalism (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978): 7.
11 Said, Orientalism, 6.

12See Tench’s account in Janeen Webb & Andrew Enstice, Aliens and Savages: Fiction,

Politics and Prejudice in Australia (Sydney: HarperCollins, 1998): 30.

xvi WRITING THE NATION ]

regarded as innately contentious. Terry Goldie uses the term in the title of
his seminal work (Fear and Temptation: The Image of the Indigene in Canadian,
Australian and New Zealand Literature) without any particular qualification or
discussion of it as a term necessitating any debate. An anthropologist col-
league with whom the present author discussed the term agreed that it was
not controversial; indeed, he obliged with the following definition:

groups of people who in the context of histories of colonization – from inside

as well as out – and of modern nation-building, lay claim to being theoriginal in-
habitants of the land; that is to say people who collectively regard their ancestors
as for ever having inhabited that Land and thus are ‘One’ with that Land, not
merely custodians of it (and in many cases the Seas also), but inseparable in their
collective identity from the Land. From an anthropologist’s perspective the
word ‘indigenous’ is often coterminous with tribe or at least people who ac-
knowledge their original tribal origins and special association with particular
land or country.13

The Oxford Dictionary defines the term as follows:

Indigene
L. indigena native lit. ‘inborn ‘ person. f. indi-(indu-) ancient derivative form of in
prep
+ gen stem of gignere, in passive ‘to be born’
A. adj. Native:= I N D I G E N O U S .
[…]
indigenous, born in a country, native.
1. Born or produced naturally in a land or region; native so belonging naturally
to (the soil, region, etc). (Used primarily of aboriginal inhabitants or natural
products)14

That this term can be used interchangeably with ‘aborigine’ is apparent from
a further quotation from this same authoritative source.15

13 Emailed to author from Dr Chris Griffin (Edith Cowan University).

14The Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition, prepared by J.A. Simpson & E.S.C. Weiner
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1989), vol. 7: 867.
15 “aborigines A purely L. word applied to those who were believed to have been the

inhabitants of a country ab origine, ie from the beginning (see O R I G I N ).”

] Introduction xvii

Henry Reynolds offers a succinct comment on how the arrival of a con-

quering race impacted on the status of the Australian aborigine in a land in
which he was once the sovereign presence:

Aborigines were expected – and usually compelled – to conform to a role

created for them in advance of their entry into European society. The name
changed over time and from place to place – nigger, coon, boong, abo, Jacky –
but the role remained much the same. It was compounded of racial ideas ship-
ped in from Europe. Speaking out of turn, looking a white man straight in the
eye, assuming a facial expression considered inappropriate for a ‘nigger’ – each
one could merit a fist in the face, a boot in the balls or a stockwhip round the
shoulders. Above all else Europeans were interested in keeping ‘cheeky niggers’
in their place. There was no room for the ‘cheeky niggers’ in the world the
settlers were making – ‘cheeky niggers’ usually had short and unhappy lives or
they rotted slowly in penal institutions.16

The contempt for the black man can be traced back to the slave trade and
the trafficking in human beings which resulted in the black races being for-
ever relegated to the ranks of the less than human. Patrick Brantlinger, in an
incisive study of Victorian attitudes to Africa, shows how these became in-
creasingly antagonistic with Britain’s increasing involvement in Africa:

The Myth of the Dark Continent was thus a Victorian invention. As part of a
larger discourse of empire, it was shaped by political and economic pressures
and also by a psychology of blaming the victim through which Europeans pro-
jected their own darkest impulses onto Africa. When the taint of slavery fused
with sensational reports about cannibalism, witchcraft, and apparently shameless
sexual customs, Victorian Africa emerged draped in the pall of darkness that the
Victorians then took as reality.17

Later Australian writers articulated, in various ways, a sense of outrage or

compassion at the oppression and displacement of the Aborigines, and even
earlier there were some romantic attempts to portray the Aborigine in the
guise of ‘noble savage’. White’s strategy does not conform to any of these

16 Henry Reynolds, Frontier, Aborigines, Settlers and Lands (Sydney: Allen & Unwin,
1987): 69.
17 Patrick Brantlinger, “Victorians and Africans: The Genealogy of the Myth of the

Dark Continent,” in Race, Writing, Difference, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Chicago: U of
Chicago P , 1985): 217.
xviii WRITING THE NATION ]

programmes; rather, it subverts the orientalist discourse embedded in such

texts as Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. His work contributes to the re-inscription
of the dignity of black humanity; a dignity and a humanity so radically eroded
by the experience of white imperialism. Conrad’s novella will be invoked in
this study as a paradigmatic orientalist text. (Its sheer familiarity to most
readers has, in fact, prompted my own repeated invocation of this work in
several other contexts of debate on colonialist attitudes and issues.) The clas-
sic signage of orientalist ideology as identified by Said in his “Introduction”
to Orientalism is detectable in Conrad’s novella. The African writer Chinua
Achebe has denounced the work as a ‘racist’ text, and cites the broad esteem
in which it is held as reinforcing its capacity to provoke a negative response
to Africa and Africans.18 It will be seen that White’s re-invention of the
indigene and of the black world negates the dehumanizing of the non-Euro-
pean and the valorization of white culture that has underpinned orientalist
discourse, which, at its most extreme, as JanMohamed has established, pro-
jects an impression of a manichaean division of humanity into black and
white as two immutably opposed categories of being in which all virtue,
goodness, and civilization belong to the white world and the black is rele-
gated to the status of the less than human.19
It may be claimed that orientalism is much more complex than this binary
would suggest, yet, as Said argues,

The relationship between Occident and Orient is a relationship of power, of

domination, of varying degrees of a complex hegemony […] the Orient was
Orientalized not only because it was discovered to be “Oriental” in all those
ways considered commonplace by an average nineteenth-century European, but
also because it could be that is, submitted, to being – made Oriental.20

18 In his now classic denunciation of this novella of Conrad’s as “racist,” Achebe also
pointed out its iconic status in the Western academy, where it is regarded, in the words of
one authority on Conrad (Albert Guérard) as “one of the half-dozen greatest short novels
in the English language.” See Achebe, “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of
Darkness” (1965), in Achebe, Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays, 1965–1987 (London:
Heinemann, 1988): 1–13.
19 Abdul JanMohamed, “The Economy of Manichean Allegory: The Function of Racial

Difference in Colonialist Literature,” Critical Inquiry 12.1 (1985): 59–87.

20 Said, Orientalism, 5–6.
] Introduction xix

In the citation that follows of Flaubert’s representation of Kuchuk Hanem,

the Egyptian courtesan he encountered and his representation of whom re-
sulted in “a widely influential model of the Oriental woman,” Said points out
that she is never allowed to speak; her emotions and her history are com-
pletely unknown: “He spoke for and represented her.”21 So Said moves on
to establish his view of the “sheer knitted-together strength of Orientalist
discourse, its very close ties to the enabling socio-economic and political in-
stitutions and its redoubtable durability.”22
Edward Said’s belief in the imbrication of literary works in ‘the world’ in
which they originate is one of the important theoretical underpinnings of the
present study.23 Besides this, White’s project, as explored here, appears to ex-
emplify what Said has enunciated is the manifest duty of the writer and intel-
lectual in his society, of “speaking truth to power,” the obligation to address

[…] the constituted and authorized powers of one’s own society, which are ac-
countable to its citizenry, particularly when those powers are exercised in a
manifestly disproportionate and immoral war, or in a deliberate program of dis-
crimination, repression and collective cruelty […]. The goal of speaking the
truth is, in so administered a mass society as ours, mainly to project a better
state of affairs and one that corresponds more closely to a set of moral prin-
ciples – peace, reconciliation, abatement of suffering – applied to the known
facts. Certainly in writing and speaking, one’s aim is not to show everyone how
right one is but rather to try to induce a change in the moral climate whereby
aggression is seen as such, the unjust punishment of people’s or individuals is
either prevented or given up, the recognition of rights and democratic freedoms
is established as a norm for everyone, not invidiously for a select few […].24

At the same time as invoking the global perspectives of theorists like Said,
this study also explores issues relevant to the region by consulting the work
of such theorists as Alan Lawson and Stephen Slemon whose work needs to
be more widely appreciated for their highlighting of issues of particular con-
cern to settler cultures. Awareness of the variations within the regions (the

21 A similar comment may be made of Conrad’s representation of the African woman,

Kurtz’s lover in Heart of Darkness.

22 Said, Orientalism, 7.

23 Edward Said, The World, the Text, and the Critic (Cambridge M A : Harvard U P , 1983): 35.

24 Edward Said, “Speaking Truth to Power,” in Said, Representations of the Intellectual: The

1993 Reith Lectures (New York: Pantheon, 1994): 98-100.

xx WRITING THE NATION ]

differences between them can be quite considerable) needs to be balanced

against the focus on the commonalities within the wider field. Mark Williams
has drawn attention to the different context obtaining in New Zealand:

New Zealand by the end of the nineteenth century was beginning to invent it-
self by differentiating itself from Australia, in part by constructing a myth of
superior virtue. A conspicuous sign of this virtuousness was held to be the more
favourable treatment of indigenous peoples. While Australia was seen as a land
of climactic extremes populated by convicts who treated their natives badly,
New Zealand was a ‘Better Britain’ where the climate, crops and citizens were
an improvement on the originals and where a mark of the colony’s difference
from its closest sibling was both the possession of a superior native race and the
high regard in which those natives were held.25

Contextualizing the work of Australian writers and, indeed, of ‘settler’ litera-

tures more centrally within the parameters of current postcolonial theoretical
debate can heighten the sense of their contemporary significance.
Settler cultures like Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, as Slemon has
emphasized, have “much to tell” to postcolonial studies.26 Yet, curiously,
there has been a lack of focus on these regions, as though their experience
were somehow less relevant and the story of colonialism best explored in the
regions of the ‘Third World’.27 Perhaps it is because they are regarded as part

25 Mark Williams, “Ways of Fading in ‘Maoriland’,” in Diaspora: The Australasian Ex-

perience, ed. Cynthia vanden Driesen & Ralph Crane (New Delhi: Prestige, 2005): 375.
26 Stephen Slemon, “Unsettling the Empire: Resistance Theory for the Second World,”

World Literature Written in English, 30.2 (1990): 30–41.

27 Ashcroft, Griffiths & Tiffin have explained the evolution of the terminology of ‘First

World’, ‘Second World’ etc. and the extension of the second term to apply not only to the
countries of the Socialist bloc as used in Fredric Jameson’s essay (on “Third-World Litera-
ture,” in 1986) but also to apply to the “economically successful ex-colonies such as
Canada, Australia.” See Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths & Helen Tiffin, Key Concepts in Post-
Colonial Studies (London & New York: Routledge, 1998): 232. They also cite an additional
category, a ‘Fourth World’, designating indigenous peoples placed in “an even more mar-
ginalized position in the social and political hierarchy than other post-colonial peoples.”
This study will confine itself to use of the term ‘settler culture’ as a term reflecting both
the past and the present situation of these regions while avoiding the contradictions atten-
dant on placing regions in one or other category of First, Second or Third World as
outlined by Aijaz Ahmad in his response to Jameson, “Jameson’s Rhetoric of Otherness
and the ‘National Allegory’,” Social Text 17 (Autumn 1987): 3–25.
] Introduction xxi

of the European polity that these regions of the world seem to suffer a kind
of erasure from the mind-set of international scholars contemplating the
postcolonial scene. As one critic puts it,

Thinking about settlers is deeply unfashionable in postcolonial criticism. Settlers

have always been unpalatable subjects. Their writings […] rest uncomfortably
on the cusp of coloniality, writings which work with rather than against Euro-
pean models and feature difficult and sometimes ambiguous engagements with
a history of invasion and dispossession.28

This critic does draw attention to the fact that others have “made the argu-
ment elsewhere.” The Canadian critic Stephen Slemon and the Australian
critic Alan Lawson have argued for the inclusion of these regions in the area
of postcolonial debate and inquiry as being of no less importance than the
‘Third World’ as sites of postcolonial experience, and their arguments de-
serve to have more impact. Certainly, Ashcroft et al. included the settler
cultures in their seminal work on postcolonial theory, but they did not
appear to highlight sufficiently the vital areas of contrast to the experience of
the ‘Third World’. They used the term ‘postcolonial’ to refer to “all the cul-
tures affected by the imperial process from the moment of colonization to
the present day” and identified as their special common characteristic that
they had “emerged in their present form out of the experience of coloniza-
tion and asserted themselves by foregrounding the tension with the imperial
power.”29 The work drew criticism from Arun Mukherjee as well as Bob
Hodge and Vijay Mishra for what seemed to them too easy an elision of
crucial areas of difference.30
There is, therefore, a need to continue making a case to redress the bal-
ance of focus and retrieve a space for the consideration of the settler cul-
tures. Could it also be necessary to ground theoretical discussion in practical
literary applications, in analyses of the rich literary works from these regions

28 Gillian Whitlock, “Settler Subjects,” in Whitlock, The Intimate Empire: Reading Women’s
Autobiography (London & New York: Cassell, 2000): 41.
29 Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths & Helen Tiffin, The Empire Writes Back: Theory and

Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures (London: Routledge, 1989): 2.

30 See Arun Mukherjee, “Whose Post-Colonialism and Whose Post-Modernism?”

World Literature Written in English 30.2 (1990): 1–9. See also Bob Hodge & Vijay Mishra,
The Dark Side of the Dream: Australian Literature and the Post-Colonial Mind (Sydney: Allen &
Unwin, 1991): 286.
xxii WRITING THE NATION ]

from within the perspectives of the defining theories, so that their relevance
is inescapable? There is a need to deal with what is a perceptible vacuum in
the application of settler-culture theory in the discussion of Australian lite-
rature in university classrooms, national and international conferences, aca-
demic journals, and other venues of scholarly debate. Partly this stems from
a neglect within Australian academia itself to confront the full implications of
the Australian colonial experience. At least one distinguished professor of
Australian literature conceded, at an international conference in Singapore,
that Australian literature is not sufficiently studied within Australian univer-
sities and its study is insufficiently theorized.31 Those of us who labour in the
vineyard of Australian literature in universities know that it is still possible
for students to complete a degree in literature that need not include the
slightest taste of the riches of Australian literature, their own cultural inheri-
tance. The situation in the schools is not much different, with the study of
the canonical European works continuing to dominate such literature as is
on the syllabus. As long as this situation continues, the case for drawing the
attention of world scholars to the significance of settler literatures may sound
more than a little hollow.
Nevertheless, the case must continue to be made. Slemon has pointed out
that the continuing focus on the Third World perpetuates the simplistic
binarism of Europe and its Other.32 It stems, in his view, from a mistaken
tendency to regard the writing from these regions as always innately exempli-
fying resistance. Lawson and Johnston argue that the attitude privileges one
form of colonialism over another and (most important, in my view) that it
has the effect of “bracketing off locations where transactions of power are
most visible.”33 This latter argument needs to be reiterated forcefully in every
possible forum.
In fact, the colonial impact was far more destructive in these regions than
anywhere else in the colonized world. Here, the arrival of white settlers in the
wake of the Imperial forces involved the wholesale displacement and even

31 11th Biennial Symposium on the Literatures and Cultures of the Asia-Pacific Region,
“Literatures in English and their Centres: Perceiving From the Inside,” 7–10 December
2005.
32 Stephen Slemon, “Unsettling the Empire: Resistance Theory for the Second

World,” 34.
33 Anna Johnston & Alan Lawson, “Settler Colonies,” in A Companion to Postcolonial Studies,

ed. Henry Schwarz & Sangeetha Ray (Oxford & New York: Blackwell, 2000): 368.
] Introduction xxiii

genocide of the indigenous peoples. In Culture and Imperialism, Said lists the
major acts of European violence in the nineteenth century, which include the
quelling of outbreaks of resistance in other colonial outposts in such epi-
sodes as the Indian Mutiny (1857–58), the conquest of Egypt (1882), the
Opium Wars in China (1839–42), and the campaign against the Ashantis in
West Africa (1874).34 Yet most of these would pale into insignificance
alongside the sustained cruelties and atrocities often committed by civilian
settlers against indigenous peoples – the survival of the settler necessitating
the destruction of those whose lands and very lives became forfeited to the
colonizer. These lands were thus the scene of greater acts of European bar-
barism than those regions where the colonial presence remained only for the
period of a military occupation and the promotion of trade. Henry Reynolds
argues that more Aborigines were killed in the state of Queensland in the
early years of settlement than the sum total of all the Australian fatalities in
both of the World Wars:

Much of Aboriginal history since 1788 is political history. Recent confrontations

in Nookanbah and Arkun are not isolated incidents but outcrops of a long
range of experience reaching back to the beginnings of European settlement
[…]. The questions at stake – land-ownership, development, progress, arrived
with Governor Phillip and have been the pivot of white-Aboriginal relations
ever since. They are surely the most enduring issues of Australian politics […].
Frontier violence was political violence. We cannot ignore it because it took
place on the fringes of European settlement. Twenty thousand blacks were
killed before federation […]. In parts of the continent the Aboriginal death-toll
overshadows even that of the overseas wars of the twentieth century. About
5000 Europeans from Australia north of the Tropic of Capricorn died in the
five wars between the outbreak of the Boer war and the end of the Vietnam
engagement. But in a similar period – say the seventy years between the first
settlement in north Queensland in 1861 and the early 1930’s – as many as
10,000 blacks were killed in skirmishes with the Europeans in north Australia.35

The most heinous aspect of this was that the violence was not the result of
military action but more often the result of European settlers clashing with
those indigenes whose way of life had been forever disrupted by the arrival
and establishment of the settler homesteads upon their traditional hunting

34Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (London: Chatto & Windus, 1993): 126.
35Henry Reynolds, The Other Side of the Frontier (Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin, 1982):
200–201.
xxiv WRITING THE NATION ]

grounds. Women and children were customarily among the victims of these
massacres, most of which were not recorded.
Despite the recent attempts of Keith Windschuttle to dislodge what has
been dubbed “the black armband” view of history, and his questioning of
the facts and figures provided by such researchers as Reynolds and Lyndall
Ryan who have compiled considerable evidence of the heavy toll in murder
and mayhem perpetrated by white invaders, the consensus still leans towards
acceptance of the latters’ perceptions. In his Introduction to Whitewash, a
collection of scholarly essays refuting Windschuttle’s ideas, Robert Manne
deplores the remarkably enthusiastic reception accorded him, particularly by
the Murdoch press, and states:

By their nature, historical debates of the kind raised by the first volume of
Windschuttle’s trilogy cannot be resolved in the pages of newspapers, their
resolution requires space. This book is aimed at readers who are interested in
the early history of Australia and in a thorough, expert discussion of Wind-
schuttle’s case […]. What is even more alarming in the reception of The Fabri-
cation of Aboriginal History is the way so many prominent Australian conservatives
have been so easily misled by so ignorant, so polemical and so pitiless a book.36

Most importantly, while decolonization was a development that took place,

finally, almost simultaneously in different parts of the world after the Second
World War, in the settler cultures the indigenous peoples continue to regard
themselves, with some justification, as being still under the colonial yoke.
This situation, which is, after all, a scenario of continuing colonial confron-
tation, should confer a particular importance on these regions in the context
of contemporary debates on the postcolonial experience. Not only do they
offer (as Lawson has stated) profoundly relevant studies of negotiations of
power, but they are also (and this is my particular point in this study) regions
that offer great potential for the possibility of evolving answers to such
questions as were posed by Edward Said at the conclusion of his classic work
Orientalism. Tracing the evolution and embeddedness of orientalism, a dis-
course that relegates the non-European to a state of inalienable alterity, Said
asks questions (articulated by Frantz Fanon before him) whose urgency con-
tinues to resonate in the modern world:

36 Robert Manne, in Whitewash: On Keith Windschuttle’s Fabrication of Aboriginal History, ed.

Robert Manne (Melbourne: Blank Inc, 2003): 11–12.

] Introduction xxv

[…] what of some alternative to Orientalism? I have attempted to raise a whole

lot of questions that are relevant in discussing the problems of human experi-
ence: How does one represent other cultures? What is another culture? Is the
notion of a distinct culture (or race or religion or civilization) a useful one or
does it always get involved either in self-congratulation (when one discusses
one’s own) or hostility and aggression (when one discusses the ‘other’ […].).37

Answers to these questions could (as current world conflicts illustrate) be of

importance for the ultimate survival of humanity as the denigration and
hatred of the racial and religious Other continue to spark international con-
flagrations while the hideous potential of weapons of mass destruction
continues to grow. The recognized need is for developing discursive strate-
gies to deal with ‘other’ cultures without disparagement of difference – in-
deed, allowing for the celebration of difference. The need for developing the
discourse that Said and, before him, Fanon indicated as a desideratum has
now assumed urgent dimensions. The potential already present in the con-
text of these settler cultures is fraught with significance in a world context in
which the questions of imperialist power-play continue to dominate the
international stage. In Said’s view,

The major task, then, is to match the new economic and socio-political disloca-
tions and configurations of our time with the startling realities of human inter-
dependence on a world scale. If the Japanese, East European, Islamic and
Western instances express anything in common, it is that a new critical con-
sciousness is needed, and this can only be achieved by new attitudes to educa-
tion […] we need to go on and to situate these [inquiries into students’ own
identities] in a geography of other identities, peoples, cultures, and then to study
how, despite the differences, they have always overlapped one another, through
unhierarchical influence, crossing, incorporation, recollection, deliberate forget-
fulness, and, of course, conflict […]. The fact is we are mixed in with one
another in ways that most national systems of education have not dreamed of;
to match knowledge in the arts and sciences with these integrative realities is, I
believe, the intellectual and cultural challenge of the moment.38

37 Said, Orientalism, 325.

38 Said, Culture and Imperialism, 401.
xxvi WRITING THE NATION ]

Importance of the writer

My contention is that this counter-discourse could first emerge – is, in fact,
already emerging – in the settler regions of the world where once opposed
and radically divided categories of human beings are now obliged to coexist
in the same space and must devise means for permanent cohabitation. In
tracing the elements which contributed to the building of the monolith of
orientalism, Said points out that beside “the developing sciences of ethno-
logy, comparative anatomy, philology and history […] a sizable body of lite-
rature was added, produced by novelists, poets, translators and gifted travel-
lers.”39 It was to works of literature that he himself most often turned to
obtain the illustrative material for his insights. In the task of narrating the
nation, as other theorists have also asserted, the work of the creative writer is
crucial. Patrick White’s multi-faceted works have been explored from within
a range of different perspectives: spiritual searches after transcendental
truths; satires on Australian society; mines of rich allusions whose esoteric or
elemental nature involve the exploration of links across a variety of cultures
and the arts. Their contribution to the general debate on postcolonial issues
and the politics of black/white relations within postcolonial Australia has
not, so far, been explored in any depth. In the texts selected for study here,
there is evidence even of a project which can be articulated as a search for
the possibility of white indigeneity, the potential for the white settler belong-
ing within the land as does the indigene; surely an intriguing consideration
for debates on the questions of identity endemic within the context of settler
cultures.
In Johnston and Lawson’s view, the settler-subject is

[…] always addressing the absent (and absentee) cultural authority of the
Imperium and the unavailable (and effaced) cultural authority of the indigene
[…]. The crucial theoretical move to be made is to see the ‘settler’ as uneasily
occupying a space between two First Worlds […]. Its Other First World is that
of the First Nations whose authority they not only replaced and effaced but also
desired […]. To each of these First Worlds, the settlers are secondary – indeed
supplementary.40

39 Said, Orientalism, 40.

40 Anna Johnston & Alan Lawson, “Settler Colonies,” 370.
] Introduction xxvii

If settler-cultures are essentially sites of negotiation between contending

influences, then the exploration of these negotiations take place primarily in
and through the texts produced by their creative artists. Stephen Slemon has
also identified what he sees as the particular challenge facing writers from
settler cultures:

But what perhaps marks a genuine difference in the contestatory activity of

Second and Third World post-colonial writing […] is that the illusion of a stable
self/other, here/there, binary division has never been available to the Second-
World writer […]. The Second-World writer […] has always been complicit in
colonialism’s territorial appropriation of the land […] and this has been their in-
escapable condition […].
Second World literary writing is about internalized conflict, whereas critical
writing […] is still grounded in the ideology of unitariness and coherence and
specific argumentative drive […].41

Slemon proffers here the interesting speculation that it is the literary artist
who can probe the subtleties of the issues of newly emergent identity in the
complex context of the settler culture, since the creative work can allow
contradiction, conflict, and doubleness in a mode that the demands on the
critic for argumentative cohesiveness and intellectual coherence cannot ac-
commodate. Lawson makes the attractive suggestion that reading strategies
should accommodate devices similar to that of zeugma, a loose approxima-
tion being acceptable where complete approximation is not to be looked for,
or indeed desired. In re-thinking the role of the settler–writer as a mediatory
one, his suggestion is to borrow the paradigm from linguistics and invoke the
concept of ‘zeugma’, which allows for an absence of complete grammatical
fit between two elements but nevertheless admits of an overlap that brings
them into a close relationship.42
A glance at the early decades of Australian writing suggests that the
writers’ preoccupations were more nearly bound up with the relationship to
the Imperial ‘parent’ culture as the creative talents of the new settlement
strove to define their sense of a distinctive destiny shaped by life in a land
dramatically different from the original British homeland and experiences

41 Slemon, “Unsettling the Empire,” 36–37.

42 Alan Lawson, “Proximities: From Asymptote to Zeugma,” in Postcolonizing the Com-
monwealth: Studies in Literature and Culture ed. Rowland Smith (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid
Laurier U P , 2000): 19–35.
xxviii WRITING THE NATION ]

which could find no parallel in the traditional world. There were those, in-
deed, who felt that the new land could never become the subject of poetry.
Paul Carter articulates the dilemma of those early transplanted Britons in the
following terms:

It was almost a commonplace among British residents that, in Australia, the

laws of association seemed to be suspended. There seemed to be nothing that
could be accurately named. There was consequently very little purchase for the
imagination – that mental faculty for making analogies. This was why Barron
Field lamented in his Geographical Memoirs that Australia was quite unsuitable as a
subject for poetry:
“[…] All the dearest allegories of human life, are bound up with the
infant and slender green of spring, the dark redundance of summer and
the sere and yellow leaf of autumn. These are as essential to the poet as
emblems as they are to the painter […] and immemorial custom has
made the change of the seasons [...] a part, as it were, of our very nature. I
can therefore hold no fellowship with Australian foliage […]”43

Carter analyses this as a problem of language, not a problem of nature; the

lack of associations, the lack of resemblances of the phenomena of the new
land to those of the original English homeland were felt to be inhibiting:
“Field’s real subject is not nature at all. It is language, and the impossibility of
distinguishing the language of feeling from the language of description.”44
The distinctive characteristics of the new literature which began to emerge
in time, however, found their apotheosis in the writing of the 1890s. At least
two books whose titles imply the defining role of literature in elucidating the
nationalist ideals of the period have themselves contributed to the reinforce-
ment of the legend they describe: Vance Palmer’s The Legend of the Nineties
(1954) and Russel Ward’s The Australian Legend (1958) analyse the back-
ground and defining characteristics of this nationalist literature. Its qualities
were encapsulated in a phrase articulated by one of its preeminent figures,
Joseph Furphy, in describing the features of his own writing: “Temper de-
mocratic, bias offensively Australian.”45 Interestingly, for none of the writers
of this period, so consciously dedicated to defining the images of the emer-

43 Quoted in Paul Carter, An Essay in Spatial History (London: Faber & Faber, 1987): 43.
44 Carter, The Road to Botany Bay, 44.
45 Quoted in G.A. Wilkes, “The Eighteen Nineties,” in Australian Literary Criticism, ed.

Grahame Johnston (Melbourne: Oxford U P , 1962): 37.

] Introduction xxix

gent nation, did the task entail direct negotiation of the presence of, and the
white settler relationship to, the indigenous peoples. Indeed, a definition of
what it was to be Australian, in an authoritative pronouncement of The Bul-
letin of the times, pointedly omits the indigene, along with other non-Euro-
peans, convicts, and women:

All white men who come to these shores – with a clean record – and who leave
behind them the memory of the class-distinctions and the religious differences
of the old world […] are Australian. In this regard all men who leave the tyrant-
ridden lands of Europe for freedom of speech and right of personal liberty are
Australians before they set foot on the ship that brings them hither […]. No
nigger, no Chinaman, no lascar, no kanaka, no purveyor of cheap coloured
labour is an Australian.46

The Canadian critic J.J. Healy’s seminal work Literature and the Aborigine in
Australia indicates that the cultural amnesia with regard to the Aborigine
lingered into the third decade of the twentieth century, at least in the litera-
ture of Australia. In public life, Aborigines were not even ceded the right to
vote till well into the second half of the same century. (Statistics relating to
the health and mortality rate of these people still continue to tell their own
sad story.) Healy’s work, which will be discussed further on in this chapter
and will be constantly referred to elsewhere in this study, outlines what he
sees as a persistent concern with the Aborigine in the “literary consciousness
of Australia.”47 The writers whose work he discusses evince a range of atti-
tudes to the Aborigine, beginning with the period of first contact. Healy con-
tinues his study up to the last quarter of the twentieth century and charts a
series of different reactions to the Aborigine: from total repulsion, parti-
cularly in the period of early contact, to ambivalence, compunction, and,
latterly, compassion, commiseration, and guilt.
If the white settler is to belong within this adoptive home which he now
shares with the indigene, a first requirement would be to shake off the inter-
pellation of his mind-set, the psychic conditioning of his British colonial in-
heritance. The briefest glance at this deeply shadowed cultural legacy will
underline the dimensions of the task faced by any writer attempting to

46 Quoted in Richard White, Inventing Australia: Images and Identity 1688–1980 (St.
Leonards, N S W : Allen & Unwin, 1981): 81.
47 J.J. Healy, Literature and the Aborigine in Australia (1978; St. Lucia: U of Queensland P ,

1989).
xxx WRITING THE NATION ]

handle the iconography of the indigene within a settler culture. The settler
story needs to be positioned squarely within the larger story of European
colonialism. It is a story that has involved over two-thirds of the known
world, and its “tangled, many-sided legacy,” as Said points out, continues to
take on new permutations in the contemporary world.48 Since the focus in
this study is primarily on the Australian context, one needs, at the outset, to
also acknowledge the diversity of the indigenous groups in Australia, a diver-
sity which is unavoidably elided in the homogenizing term ‘Aborigine’.
Ronald and Catherine Berndt acknowledge that, regarding the numbers of
diverse tribal groups, “the more conservative figure of about 500 seems
reasonable.”49
From the 1860s on, the development of physical anthropology and of
‘ethnology’ as disciplines concerned with racial differences strengthened the
orientalist stereotypes relating to the blacks. Brantlinger cites the example of
even a scientist like T.H. Huxley, in a study tracing a possible link between
the African, the chimpanzee, and the gorilla, choosing to bring into it an
entirely gratuitous note on African cannibalism. He sees this as exemplifying
the mind-set of the nineteenth century. Brantlinger quotes the eugenist Pear-
son as offering, by the end of that century, a ‘scientific’ justification for geno-
cide: “The nation organized for the struggle (of existence) must be a homo-
geneous whole, not a mixture of superior and inferior races.”50 Inevitably,
this was the mind-set of the Europeans who arrived in Australia; the denigra-
tion of the dark races was already embedded in the culture. The earliest
English visitor to Australia, William Dampier (1698), records feelings of total
repulsion at the race he encountered here:

The inhabitants of this country are the miserablest People in the world […] setting
aside their humane shape they differ but little from Brutes…. The colour of their
skins… is coal black like that of the Negroes of Guinea.
They have no cloaths: but a piece of the rind of a tree ty’d like a Girdle... and a
handful of long Grass […] thrust under their Girdle to cover their nakedness
[…]. They hav no Houses, but lye in the open Air, without any covering […].51

48 Said, Culture and Imperialism, 18.

49 Ronald & Catherine Berndt, The World of the First Australians (Canberra: Aboriginal
Studies Press, 1999): 29.
50 See Brantlinger, “Victorians and Africans: The Myth of the Dark Continent,” 206.

51 See Richard White, Inventing Australia: 2–3 (my emphases).

] Introduction xxxi

There is an obvious eurocentric bias in these observations. Captain Cook’s

impressions a hundred years later seem something of an aberration from the
norm. They show the obvious influence of Rousseau’s ideas of the ‘noble
savage’:
They may happen to be some of the most wretched people on earth; but in
reality they are far more happier than we Europeans; being wholly unacquainted
not only with the superfluous but the necessary Conveniences so much sought
after in Europe […] the Earth and Sea of their own accord furnishes them with
all things necessary for life […].52

Janeen Webb and Andrew Enstice have shown that despite the carefully dis-
passionate tone of most of his official writing Lieutenant Tench (of the First
Fleet), writing in 1793, displays the same repugnance as Dampier’s:
Only the occasional word or phrase indicates Tench’s cultural prejudices at
work (note the implied censure for lack of cleanliness and the casual reference
to black Africans having being brought along for the trip). Like both Dampier
and Cook, Tench notes the marked Aboriginal disinterest in adopting European
clothing. In other words their lack of practical clothing is seen as proof they are
‘uncivilized’ and Tench reports it in conjunction with his observation that “they
are fond of adorning themselves with scars which increase their natural hideous-
ness. It is hardly possible to see anything in human shape more ugly than one of
these savages thus scarified and farther ornamented with a fish bone stuck
through the gristle of his nose.”53

Literary responses to the indigenous presence

What were the responses of the early literary figures of the day? Some of the
earliest Australian poets made some allusions, in typical Romantic mode, to
the ‘noble savage’. At least one, Charles Harpur (recognized as the first
‘native’ Australian poet), could, even in the face of worsening relationships
with the blacks, still express some awareness of a common humanity and
acknowledge that “bloody deeds” which made “the Earth, a Hell of wrong
and robbery and untimely death,” were the acts of “Man […] savage or civi-
lised.”54 Thereafter, though there was still the occasional sympathetic writing

52 Webb & Enstice, Aliens and Savages, 27.

53 Quoted in Webb & Enstice, Aliens and Savages, 30.
54 See his poem “The Creek of the Four Graves,” in The Poetical Works of Charles Harpur,

ed. Elizabeth Perkins (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1984): 161.

xxxii WRITING THE NATION ]

(usually by women writers), attitudes to the Aborigines hardened as the viol-

ence between them and the white settlers escalated and reflected the con-
tempt and repugnance that characterized the European attitudes to the
coloured races whose lands had become the scene of imperialist exploitation
all over the world. Henry Kendall (Harpur’s successor) published poetry not
only insensitive to, but directly derogatory of, the Aborigine. Brunton Ste-
phens colluded with him in the perpetration of such atrocities as are quoted
below, works that actually found publication in the journals of the day:
‘Jack the Blackfellow’
He go to church! His Paradise,
My simple friend, is yonder bar,
There is no heaven in his eyes
But where the grog and “bacca” are.
(Henry Kendall, Sydney Mail, 1879)

‘To a Black Gin’

Thy rugged skin is hideous with tattooing,
And legible with hieroglyphic wooing- …
For thou some lover hast, I bet a guinea,
Some partner in thy fetid ignominy
What must be he whose eye thou hast delighted?
His sense of beauty hopelessly benighted!
The canons of his taste how badly sighted!
(Brunton Stephens, Sydney Gazette 1863).55

The following excerpt from The Bulletin of 9 June 1883, suggesting a plan for
dealing with the Aboriginal problem, reflects the attitudes of the time:
Gather them all together on an immense reserve in North-Western Australia
[...]. Let them have no rum and no religion, but fight and frolic in their own way.
And by the time the whites will be closing upon them they would have reduced
their own numbers […] the boundary line of their reservation could be shifted
inwards […] so the process of closing in could go on until the last survivors
were frozen out altogether. This is the way to let the Black race die out easily
and naturally […] ‘the nigger must go’.56

55 See J.J. Healy, Literature and the Aborigine, 99, also 105.
56 See Enstice & Webb, Aliens and Savages, 110–111.
] Introduction xxxiii

Even a social reformer like Marcus Clarke, whose sympathies with the suf-
ferings of the transported convicts inspired his remarkable novel For the Term
of His Natural Life (1874), regarded the Aborigines as racially inferior and ex-
pressed a kind of Conradian view that, despite the violence and bloodshed of
colonialism, British civilization was a boon to those parts of the earth where
it came to be established:

I regard the occupation of New Zealand by the British as a gross swindle from
beginning to end [… But] having got the land, established ourselves there, and
built churches and public houses, and so on, we would be fools not to use our
best endeavours to keep [it]. To do this in peace, the Maoris must be extermi-
nated […]. To make treaties and talk bunkum is perfectly useless; they must be
stamped out and utterly annihilated.57

More compassionate attitudes could only register that, in accordance with

Darwinian ideas, the days of the race were inevitably numbered. Such, for
instance, was the view of Daisy Bates, an Englishwoman who spent nearly
forty years of her life among the Aboriginal inhabitants of Australia. While
some of her writings have been the subject of considerable controversy, her
reputation is slowly being re-evaluated. In her own time (the 1930s), she was
awarded an Imperial honour for “her service to a primitive race, which it is
to be feared is slowly perishing under the influence of civilization which is
alien to their instincts and destructive to their means of subsistence.”58
It was not until nearly the third decade of the twentieth century, perhaps,
that signs of new stirrings of interest (and of conscience) become apparent.
Meanwhile, the indigenous people of Australia had suffered the full impact
of colonialist destruction of their way of life and culture and the monolithic
discourse of orientalism had consigned them permanently to the category of
impenetrable Otherness. J.J. Healy’s work Literature and the Aborigine in Aus-
tralia moves through the early records of contact, the mythicizing, the
demonizing, and the rejection of the indigene through to the twentieth cen-
tury and the resurgent compassion, guilt, and ambivalence of the 1930s in
the work of Prichard and Palmer and, more recently, that of Herbert, Dark,

57 See Patrick Brantlinger, “Black Swans, or Botany Bay Eclogues,” in “Rule of Darkness,
British Literature and Imperialism, 1830–1914 (Ithaca N Y & London: Cornell U P , 1994): 127.
58 G.L. Murray, “Foreword” to “The Passing of the Aborigines,” in Daisy Bates, My

Natives and I (incorporating The Passing of the Aborigines: A Lifetime spent among the Natives of
Australia), ed. P.J. Bridge, intro. Bob Reece (Western Australia: Hesperian Press, 2004): iv.
xxxiv WRITING THE NATION ]

Wright, White, Keneally, Mather, Astley and others. Admittedly, Healy’s

work may be criticized for some deeds of omission and commission. For in-
stance, it attributes too much significance to the impact of Prichard as effect-
ing a change in social attitudes towards the Aborigine. The attitudes of
others in the writing community to Prichard’s project are reflected in Cecil
Mann’s comment that it was not possible “to make the Australian Aboriginal
a romantic figure. With any other nature, from fragrant Zulu girl to fly-kissed
Arab maid, she [Prichard] could have done it. But the Aboriginal in Australia
anyway, cannot excite any higher feeling than nauseated pity or comical
contempt.”59
Adam Shoemaker criticizes Healy for too easily assuming Prichard’s influ-
ence and also for omitting a popular writer like Ion Idriess from his roll-call
of Australian writers who have featured the Aborigine in their work. An even
more serious qualification could be that while Prichard’s pioneering effort
could be admired, her own eurocentric biases are still discernible in various
aspects of this work.60 The omission of Idriess from Healy’s account is
understandable, in that Healy is primarily concerned with writers he felt had
contributed to turning the tide of prejudice discernible in Australian literature
since the 1930s. This is not borne out in Idriess’ practice, which Shoemaker
describes as follows: “The undertone of white supremacy is ever present and
surfaces in the most unlikely places […]. The condescending conception of
Aboriginal people which underlines Idriess’s novels was one which was
shared by the majority of Australians in the 1925–1945 period.”61
There is still insufficient apprehension of the centrality of the indigene to
the continuously evolving concept of an Australian nation, though it would
appear that the work of creative writers is beginning to reflect a pattern of

59 Quoted in Ric Throssell, Wild Winds and Wind Flowers: The Life and Letters of Katharine
Susannah Prichard (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1975): 54.
60 See Sue Thomas, “Interracial Encounters in Katharine Susannah Prichard’s Coonar-

doo,” World Literature Written in English 27.2 (1987): 234–44.

61 Adam Shoemaker, http://epress.anu.edu.au/bwwp/mobile_devices/ch02.html as

retrieved on 12 August 2006. Shoemaker goes on to describe the impact of such writing
as Idriess’ as a “shameful and degrading” experience for indigenous persons. He quotes
from an interview with Faith Bandler in which the latter describes her reaction to reading
his work in the classroom, as ‘devastating’; and her feeling about being a black person:
“And it made me feel that we had absolutely nothing. Absolutely nothing to give. All that
was black was bad.” The anecdote is evocative of the experience of Fanon recounted later
in this chapter.
] Introduction xxxv

change; a movement from registering how much ‘They are not like us’ to
exploring how much ‘They are like us’ and/or ‘We can be like them’. It is
time for the theorists to catch up with the writers, or at least to chart the
direction of the new developments. Healy is, thus far, a relatively lonely
figure in a significant and important project and his seminal insights into the
extent to which, for Australians, knowledge of the Aborigine is also knowl-
edge of the self and the extent to which Australian literature reflects this pre-
occupation needs to be radically extended and amplified.
It is hardly possible for white persons really to assess the effects of cen-
turies of denigration and persecution on the black psyche, but an insight is
perhaps possible through the impassioned writing of Frantz Fanon, where
the burden of blackness is expressed with an electrifying eloquence, the more
moving for its capacity to suggest the concomitant dehumanization of the
white. In Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon records his own experience as a
mode of chronicling how the colonial experience cripples the mentality of
human beings who are its victims and how the individual black man be-
comes entrapped within the images of colonialist discourse which have con-
structed him through the centuries as a degenerate being:

[…] I had to meet the white man’s eyes […]

“Mama, see the Negro! I am frightened!”
I made up my mind to laugh myself to tears, but laughter had become im-
possible.
I could no longer laugh, because I already knew that there were legend,
stories, history and above all historicity […]. I was battered down by tom-toms,
cannibalism, intellectual deficiency, fetichism, racial defects, slave-ship […]. I
took myself far off from my own presence […]. What else could it be for me
but an amputation, an excision, a haemorrhage that spattered my whole body
with black blood? All I wanted was to be a man among other men […].62

Fanon, as we have seen, can also move beyond this trauma of blackness, a
fact that is often insufficiently emphasized by those who draw on his influ-
ential works. It is one reason why he continues to have so much relevance
for the present time. His programme is no less than the need to ensure that
“the enslavement of man by man cease forever. That is, of one by another

62 Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, tr. Charles Lam Markmann, intro. Homi

Bhabha (Peau noire, masques blancs, 1952; tr. 1967; London: Pluto Press, 1991): 110–13.
xxxvi WRITING THE NATION ]

[…]. The Negro is not. Any more than the white man.”63 In his “Foreword”
to Black Skin, White Masks, Homi Bhabha underlines the relevance of
Fanon’s stance at a time where (in Britain particularly) a range of racially
marginalized groups are currently announcing the importance of their cul-
tural diversity: “The time has come for a return to Fanon: as always with a
question: How can the human world live its difference? How can a human
being live Other wise?”64
A new dispensation is obviously required for the mutual survival of both
black and white. The orientalist discourse of the past, however much its
monolithic power might appear to subsist still in the contemporary world,
needs to be interrogated by a discourse modelled on paradigms more sug-
gestive of human community, while the diversity of that community also
needs to be acknowledged. As Said pointed out in the concluding section of
the “Introduction” to Orientalism,

But what I should like also to have contributed here is a better understanding of
the way cultural domination has operated. If this [the book] stimulates a new
kind of dealing with the Orient, if indeed it eliminates the ‘Orient’ and the
‘Occident’ altogether, then we shall have advanced a little […].65

We are familiar with the project of black writers and thinkers concerned, like
Chinua Achebe, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Léopold Sédar Senghor, George Lam-
ming, Wilson Harris and others, aimed at restoring the self-respect and in-
tegrity of the black person, whose self-image and culture has been denigrated
and destroyed by colonialism. Patrick White’s project is unusual, in that it
represents a white writer’s attempt to ‘decolonize the mind’, to stand away
from the conditioning of a colonial culture and to reconstruct an image of a
black world that subverts the orientalist stereotype. It can be interpreted as a
response to Fanon’s reminder that if “the disaster of the man of color lies in
the fact that he was enslaved,” the colonial experience has also brutalized the
white man, so that “the disaster and the inhumanity of the white man lies in
the fact that somewhere he has killed man.”66

]^

63 Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 231.

64 Homi Bhabha, in Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, xxv.
65 Said, Orientalism, 28.
66 Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 131.
1 Recovery From Amnesia

From murdering the Aborigine after our take-over of this continent […]
From now on it is our duty to start exorcising hate and suspicion […]
creating faith in life and humankind.
— Patrick White, Patrick White Speaks (Sydney: Primavera Press, 1989): 158.

P ATRICK W H I T E ’ S P E R S O N A L O D Y S S E Y in recovering con-

cern with issues relating to the Aboriginal peoples of Australia is
traced in broadest outline in the conclusion to this study; this chap-
ter traces briefly some of the changes in consciousness and attitude that
surfaced in the academic and literary spheres as part of what seemed to be a
new Zeitgeist. Alan Lawson is one Australian critic who has registered the fact
that several developments in the socio-cultural context have brought about a
dramatic reversal of white Australians’ perceptions of their relationship to
the Aborigine. Two important native land-claim title cases mark the eruption
of new ideological understandings, to the extent that a kind of ‘cultural crisis’
has eventuated: the Mabo case (1992) which demolished the comfortable
myth of terra nullius, and the Wik case (1996). Lawson sees the Wik judgment
as a different matter altogether, in that it re-inserts a notion of incomplete
European occupation – specifically, on pastoral leases. He cites evidence
from Henry Reynolds that native title had in fact been accepted as early as
the 1840s, when the Colonial Office directed the Governor to ensure that
the granting of pastoral rights to settlers did not extinguish the right of the
traditional owners to wander over these areas. For Lawson, the Wik case

re-discovered this ethical and legal notion of co-existence by finding that ‘native
title did survive alongside pastoral title […]. It requires not a notion of separate-
2 WRITING THE NATION ]

ness but a notion of simultaneity […] proximity […]. In this new conception of
colonized space the space of the colonizer and the colonized are not mutually
exclusive: each moves in the other’s direction.1

Indeed, these events have triggered, in Lawson’s view, a contemporary mood

of anxiety which expresses itself in a series of tropes that are “symbolic
resolutions to concrete historical situations” such as the genuinely difficult
relation of races and places in the postcolonial situation:

Settlers are colonizers in an ineluctable relationality to indigenes (and indigene-

ity) while inventing a legitimizing narrative to naturalize their place, to resolve
the double bind (or what we used to call ambivalence?) to explain (or to explain
away) their relation to indigeneity. But whatever the desire for disavowal, there
is no disidentificatory gesture available to the settler. The settler seeks to estab-
lish a nation, and therefore needs to become native and to write the epic of the
nation’s origin. The ‘Origin’ is that which has no antecedent, so the presence of the
Aborigines is an impediment.2

The settler narrates himself into subjectivity; he is, essentially, ‘a teller of

tales’. What kinds of stories does the settler tell? The tropes he draws on,
such as ‘Going Native’ or the ‘Dying Race’, should be read ‘zeugmatically’ to
allow for a lack of fit between elements which admit of a degree of related-
ness though they may not be wholly commensurable. Lawson suggests:

The movement into indigenous space must be asymptotic: indigeneity must be

approached, but never touched […]. The self-indigenizing settler has to stop
just short of going completely native […]. The settler must stand just in front
of, and in the place of, but never in the body of the indigene. The need then is
to displace rather than to replace the other […].3

The Mabo and Wik decisions have had dramatic impact, but there are other
events that need to be recorded, too. The Royal Commission into Black
Deaths in Custody needs to be mentioned as a significant public official act
which, with a host of other developments, cited briefly below, have written
the Aborigine back into the consciousness of contemporary white society.
Besides the element of compulsion in the legislation described, there is also a

1 Lawson, “Proximities,” 23.

2 “Proximities,” 28 (my emphasis).
3 “Proximities,” 34.
] Recovery From Amnesia 3

degree of optimism and the spontaneity in public participation demonstrated

in such events as the Walk Across Sydney Harbour Bridge (2003) in which
so many thousands from every social grouping participated, and the cele-
brated opening of the Olympic Games in Sydney in 2000 with its invocation
of the symbolism of so many Aboriginal motifs and climaxing in the out-
standing success of the Aboriginal sporting icon, Cathy Freeman.
The latest and most overwhelming evidence of a nation’s change of heart
which must be noted would have to be the recently elected Labour Govern-
ment’s taking up the option of the long-debated move of saying “Sorry” to
those members of “the stolen generation” – those Aboriginal victims of
Government paternalism who suffered forced separation from their families.
Amidst an extraordinary outpouring of sentiment, the newly-elected Prime
Minister Kevin Rudd’s words of apology on the occasion (23 February
2008) earned him encomia as he presided over what was undeniably a
defining moment in the nation’s history.
The emergence of Aboriginal writers, poets, dramatists, and creative
talents of many kinds signals the emergence of voices which will no longer
be ignored. Most importantly, the absence of the Aboriginal story from
earlier historical narratives of Australia has been offset by different perspec-
tives and modes of investigation dictated by new ideological beliefs and
novel approaches to historical narrativization, such as a reliance on oral nar-
ratives, which have allowed Aboriginal perspectives to emerge. Henry Rey-
nolds’s work has been of crucial importance. Reynolds records his own
tribute to Trevor Reese:

I can still remember my surprise when first reading Trevor Reese’s book Aus-
tralia in the 20th Century, while preparing a course of lectures in 1967, though it
had come out three years before, because it included a whole chapter on the
Aborigines and related modern conditions to developments stretching back to
the first years of settlement.4

Marshalling evidence for how, as late as the mid-twentieth century, histo-

rians chose to bypass the whole Aboriginal story, Reynolds quotes from
Walter Murdoch’s The Making of Australia: An Introductory History (1915):

4 Henry Reynolds, The Breaking of the Great Australian Silence: Aborigines in Australian His-

toriography, 1955–1983 (Trevor Reese Memorial Lecture; London: University of London

Australian Studies Centre, 1984): 3.
4 WRITING THE NATION ]

When people talk about the history of Australia they mean the history of the
white people […] we should not stretch the term to make it include the story of
the dark skinned wandering tribes who hurled boomerangs and ate snakes in
their native land for long ages before […]. The historian is concerned with
Australia only as the dwelling place of white men and women […].

He also quotes the opening sentence of F.K. Crowley’s New History of Aus-
tralia (published as recently as 1974), commenting:

There is not a word about the ancient societies in occupation of almost every
corner of the vast continent in question: Australia was conceived officially when
King George I I I announced to Parliament, on 22 January 1787, that a plan had
been made “to remove the inconvenience which arose from the crowded state
of the gaols in the different parts of the Kingdom.”

He concludes this account of recent historians with mention of J.A. La

Nauze’s reference to the Aboriginal story as being “a melancholy anthro-
pological footnote” to Australian history.5 If today, no more than a few
decades later, our knowledge and understanding of Aborigines has been
transformed, much is owed to the works of such scholars as Reynolds him-
self. Robert Manne cites Charles Rowley’s three-volume study The Destruction
of Aboriginal Society, Outcasts in White Society, and The Remote Aborigines (1970) as
“one of the great moral and scholarly achievements of Australia’s intellectual
history. With its publication and absorption into the nation’s bloodstream,
Australia became a significantly different country.” He goes on to state:
Henry Reynolds was one of the young historians […] persuaded to give his life
to an exploration of the meaning of dispossession from many different angles.
One of the books Reynolds wrote was another important landmark, generally
regarded as a classic in its field. Yet in this work of discovery Reynolds was not
alone. From the late 1960’s, hundreds of books and articles on the disposses-
sion by dozens of scholars were published. Through their collective work the
great Australian silence was shattered.6

The important work of Paul Hasluck must not be overlooked in this con-
text. The title of his book Black Australians (1940) underlines its intention of
writing the Aborigine back into an Australian consciousness and historiogra-

Reynolds, The Breaking of the Great Australian Silence, 2–4.

5

Robert Manne, Whitewash: On Keith Windschuttle’s Fabrication of Aboriginal History, ed.

6

Robert Manne (Melbourne: Blank Inc, 2003): 3.

] Recovery From Amnesia 5

phy which had subjected him to a process of erasure. As Hasluck notes, his
work highlighted three principles relating to native policy in Western Austra-
lia: the need to “civilize” the Aborigine; to give him “the full status and legal
rights of British subjects”; and to ensure his “physical well-being.” As he
comments, “In the following years there was a gradual abandonment of the
first two ideals and considerable neglect of the third.”7 In the preface to the
1970 edition, his comments are of particular interest: “In the past thirty years
considerable changes have taken place […] in the political attention to the
welfare of Australian Aborigines. At the time I did my research […] political
interest in the Aborigines was scant. […] I knew the disheartening experi-
ence in one session of failing to find a single member of Parliament who
would make a speech on the subject.”8
The recent ‘History Wars’ coalesce around the documentation of the
historical conflicts of the past, and, whatever the views and allegiances of ob-
servers and participants, the controversy itself testifies to the centrality of
issues which in the past were simply submerged under a form of collective
amnesia. Stuart MacIntyre’s balanced assessment of the case mounted by the
opposed sides ends with an unequivocal condemnation of Windschuttle’s
work:

The Fabrication of Aboriginal History is a shocking book, shocking in its allegation

of fabrication and also in its refusal of the interpretive framework that older
historians employed. Its most challenging argument is that the colonisation of
Australia was carried out under the rule of law, with restraint and a minimum of
bloodshed. Yet Windschuttle is so intent on reducing the body count that he
fails to register the tragedy of this fatal encounter. Taxed with his lack of com-
passion, he replied, “You can’t really be serious about feeling sympathy for
someone who died 200 years ago.”9

Fiona Foley, an Aboriginal artist and activist, records what she sees as highly
significant recent developments: the setting up of significant public tributes –
sculptures which pay tribute to indigenous heroes:

7 Paul Hasluck, Black Australians: A Survey of Native Policy in Western Australia, 1829–1897
(Victoria: Melbourne U P , 1970): 12–13.
8 Hasluck, Black Australians, 3.

9 Stuart MacIntyre & Anna Clark, The History Wars (Melbourne: Melbourne U P ,

2003): 167.
6 WRITING THE NATION ]

During the Bicentennial year 1988, Djon Mundine conceived and curated the
‘The Aboriginal Memorial’, which was installed at the Sydney Biennial and
which is on permanent exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.
Ramingining artists and the surrounding communities worked towards collating
200 hollow log coffins in a tribute to all Aboriginal people in this country who
have died defending Australia.
The year 1995 ushered in the second tribute to a specific nation of Aborigi-
nal people, the Eora. This public sculpture entitled the ‘Edge of Trees’ […]
stands in the forecourt of the Museum of Sydney, the previous site of the first
Government House. The single most striking aspect of this work is the haunt-
ing use of the Eora language both in the written context and the spoken word
on compact disc […] it is the oldest retrieval of an Aboriginal language since
colonization in Australia.
At a site along the Brisbane River, artist Ron Hurley completed a sculpture
titled, ‘Geerabaugh Midden’. The six timber columns and cast aluminium re-
present the six nations which shared an aspect of the one creation story con-
cerning the rainbow serpent ceremony held at Coolum as told by Willie
Mckenzie. There is a haunting visual presence taking shape along the eastern
half of this continent.10

Within the groves of academe, issues relating to the Aboriginal peoples of

Australia are the subject of interest and debate in a range of disciplines.
Gareth Griffiths commences his review of Hodge and Mishra’s The Dark
Side of the Dream by noting the upsurge of comment and interest in Aboriginal
Australia as marked by a number of events in the field of literary investiga-
tion: the publication of Adam Shoemaker’s account, Black Words, White Page:
Aboriginal Literature 1929–1988, the re-issue of J.J Healy’s classic study Lite-
rature and the Aborigine in Australia, the publication in 1990 of Mudrooroo
Narogin Nyoongah’s Writing From the Fringe: A Study of Modern Aboriginal Lite-
rature, and, in 1991, Bob Hodge and Vijay Mishra’s study The Dark Side of the
Dream: Australian Literature and the Postcolonial Mind. These are mentioned as
significant indications of the renewed attention being paid to black culture in
Australia and its effects on society as a whole from the beginnings of white
settlement to the present time.
Hodge and Mishra’s work is perhaps the most sophisticated approach to
theorizing the relationship between dominant white Australian cultural
models and those of Australian Aboriginal cultures. It remains the most sig-

10 Fiona Foley, “A Blast from the Past,” in Constructions of Colonialisms, ed. Ian J. McNiven,

Lynette Russell & Kay Schaffer (Leicester & New York: Leicester U P , 1998): 171–72.
] Recovery From Amnesia 7

nificant attempt to date to relate this shift within Australian studies as a

whole from a nationalist model towards a comparative, postcolonial model.
The conjunction of these two movements in the construction of our repre-
sentation of Australia is likely to be of increasing significance.11 Griffiths sees
this book as taking Healy’s pioneering work further by exploring a wide
range of texts from Aboriginal narratives through to well-known white Aus-
tralian writings to other public cultural texts within the framework of post-
colonial critical theories and focuses on the “more adversarial and contra-
dictory politics that underlies the discourse of the postcolonial which they
need to address.” Mishra and Hodge see Australian culture as still marked by
its imperialist origins, displaying a ‘neocolonialist’ mentality that prompts
suppression of the dark side of its experience, which was “constructed in and
on the bodies and societies of the Aboriginal peoples.” Griffiths warns, how-
ever, that there is some danger here of recuperating a mythical ‘authentic’.

Thus the assertion in the Introduction that the “continent of Australia is still
occupied by two distinct groups, one descended from Aboriginal people, the
other from invaders and their allies” (xiv) is suspiciously absolute in its cate-
gorisation […]. No such pure order of descent exists in practice and such pure
orders are certainly not indicative of the complex hybridised genetic and cultural
heritage of modern Aboriginal peoples or the similarly hybridised condition of
contemporary ‘white’ Australia that the analysis of texts which Hodge and
Mishra go on to offer readily confirms.12

Patrick Wolfe subjected Mishra and Hodge’s text to sharply adverse com-
ment as itself falling into the trap of ‘Aboriginalism’ (a term coined by these
same authors in their own book The Dark Side of the Dream), defined as “a
variant of Orientalism that silences, manages and authorizes Aboriginal
voices under the guise of a benign paternalism” and a fault which they attri-
bute to many of the texts they discuss.13 Hodge and Mishra have rebutted
this and other charges with considerable finesse; I have nevertheless noted all

11 Gareth Griffiths, “The Dark Side of the Dreaming: Aboriginality and Australian Cul-
ture,” Australian Literary Studies 15.4 (1992): 328–32.
12 Gareth Griffiths, “The Dark Side of the Dreaming,” 329.

13 Patrick Wolfe, “Reluctant Invaders,” Meanjin 51.2 (1992): 333–38.

8 WRITING THE NATION ]

this in some detail as evidence of the importance given the continuing debate
relating to Aboriginal issues in the Australian academic world.14
The concept of ‘Aboriginalism’ is now here to stay. It is invoked as the
main target in a book entitled Power, Knowledge and Aborigines, a collection of
essays dedicated to exploring strategies which have characterized earlier
studies of Aborigines and intended to replace these discredited forms of
knowledge with a new paradigm, ‘Post-Aboriginalism’.15 Grounded on Said-
ian and Foucauldian principles, it hopes to show how partial and contingent
earlier practices in a range of disciplines such as history, anthropology, and
archaeology were. The validity of objections to these earlier representations
of the way Aborigines have been represented is demonstrated through the
manner in which they distort or suppress information relating to Australian
history and society. In a detailed review of the book, Bob Hodge hails it as
“important and timely,” and expects that it will mark “not just yet another
minor change in academic fashion but a significant event in the discursive
construction of Australia.”16 Certainly, the very next piece after Hodge’s
commentary, a review by Sue Thomas, demonstrates the fact that these ideas
are already out there. Thomas reviews a collection of essays on Sally Mor-
gan’s My Place, marking what she notes as its lapses:
‘White’ injustice, discrimination, inhumanity and psychological wounding are
located in the past […]. There is no extended self-conscious discussion of the
problematic of reading Aboriginal cultural productions using Western critical
technologies, of the epistemic violence of Aboriginalism.17

These developments may be held to signify a kind of re-birthing of the in-

digenous figure in the Australian cultural context. It is certainly no longer
possible for even the most insensitive to continue to imagine that the indi-
gene can still be written out of existence. Rather, the stage is set for a move

14 Bob Hodge & Vijay Mishra, “Semiotics and History, entering a no-go zone with

Patrick Wolfe,” Meanjin 51.4 (1992): 877–88.

15 Power, Knowledge and Aborigines, ed. Bain Attwood & John Arnold (special issue of

Journal of Australian Studies 35, 1992).

16 Bob Hodge, “Theory and Practice in the Age of Post-Aboriginalism,” Meanjin 12.1

(May 1993): 165–70.

17 Sue Thomas, “Positioning Sally Morgan,” review of Whose Place? A Study of Sally

Morgan’s My Place, ed. Delys Bird & Dennis Haskell (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1993),
Meanjin 12.1 (May 1993): 170–73.
] Recovery From Amnesia 9

beyond the tropes of anxiety to an exploration of the positive creative im-

plications of the continued survival of the indigene in the narratives of the
nation. So many of the older tropes have, in the new situation, outlived their
usefulness. The trope of the ‘dying race’, for example, will no longer serve
the purpose of providing the settler with a legitimating narrative that will
allow him easy succession into the vacated indigenous space. That space has
now been refurbished and re-invigorated. The settler still needs to tell the
story of origins – but in this story the Aborigine can no longer be left out.

Centrality of the indigene in narratives of belonging

Terry Goldie points out the importance of the indigene in the context of
settler cultures and its importance in their narratives of belonging. Having
pointed out that the image of the indigene is “a consistent concern” in the
writing from countries like New Zealand, Canada and Australia and quoting
the authority of Pierre Macherey to state that the presence of the native is
there even in those narratives where his presence is not explicitly
acknowledged, he goes on to state:
Neither the racial split between self and Other nor the process of indigenization
originates with Canada, Australia or New Zealand, but neither do they have
clear origins which might be seen as the source for these manifestations. Pre-
sumably the first instance in which one human perceived another as Other in
racial terms came when the first recognized the second as different in colour,
facial features, language etc And the first felt need for indigenization came when
a person moved to a new place and recognized an Other as having greater roots
in that place. The lack of a specific origin for these conditions is reflected in the
widespread occurrence of their modern manifestations…18

Questions of cultural appropriation do not need to be negotiated in this

tracing of White’s novelistic strategies. Nowhere does White seek to appro-
priate the black culture in the sense of attempting to speak for the Aborigine.
His work differs in this respect from that of the Canadian Rudy Wiebe – the
latter’s case for the indigene takes up the cause of the injustices done them
by the whites, and among the many voices that speak in the Wiebe text is the
unmistakable, and often dominant, voice of the indigene, as in The Tempta-
tions of Big Bear. Yet, as Goldie notes,

18 Goldie, Fear and Temptation, 14.

10 WRITING THE NATION ]

Unlike many other contemporary white Canadians who depict native peoples in
their texts, Wiebe is seldom if ever attacked by native people in public or in
conversation.His texts combine careful scholarly research and extraordinary
sensitivity to native cultures.19

In his comparison of Wiebe and White, Goldie notes that there is a “diffe-
rence in sensitivity and tone, and in the case of White an assurance of
distance […] indigenization which leads to death in Voss and an alienated
exile in A Fringe of Leaves allow the distance to be maintained.”20
While Australian and Canadian theorists have been active in defining
issues relating particularly to the positionality of the settler, there is some-
thing of a vacuum in exploring specific questions relating to white aspira-
tions to indigeneity and the role of the indigene in such narratives of belong-
ing. Bill Ashcroft’s analysis of the impulse to indigeneity on the part of white
settlers discusses it primarily as an impulse to distinguish themselves from
their European inheritance.21 He concentrates primarily on the problems as-
sociated with the need to adapt the imported language to the new land and
“to compete on Europe’s terms, for literary recognition which will validate
the New World in the eyes of the Old.”22
Invocation of parallels with the American situation is unhelpful. The deci-
mation of the indigenous population of the region to negligible proportions
removes one of the most important elements that must enter into an assess-
ment of the settler’s position in the country of adoption. Ashcroft discusses
at some length the problem (one that seemed to absorb most attention from
earliest times and that is cited by such early arrivals as Barron Field) of
adapting the imported language to the alien landscape and the responses of
poets like Judith Wright (from Australia), Allen Curnow (New Zealand), and
Robert Kroetsch (Canada). He points out the Canadian Dennis Lee’s dis-
covery that “perhaps our job was not to fake a space of our own and write it
up, but rather to find words for our spacelessness […]. Instead of pushing
against the grain of an external uncharged language, perhaps we should
finally come to writing with that grain.”
Although Ashcroft does mention that “One of the more complex features
of settler colonies has been the relationship between the indigenous and

19 Goldie, Fear and Temptation, 213.

20 Fear and Temptation, 213.
21 Ashcroft, Griffiths & Tiffin, The Empire Writes Back, 134.
22 The Empire Writes Back, 135.
] Recovery From Amnesia 11

settler populations,” he confines himself to a discussion of the consequences

of this for writing: i.e. the use of Aborigines as subjects in texts and the
attempt to incorporate an Aboriginal aesthetic into Australian writing as was
attempted by the Jindyworobak movement in the 1930s and 1940s.23 With
reference to the former, no comment is offered on the nature of these re-
presentations and what they suggest of the settler/indigene relationship. He
attributes the transience of the Jindyworobak movement to its being perhaps
“too radical” an indigenizing strategy. The transience may, more precisely, be
attributable to the fact that it was too artificial an attempt to “annex, to join”
(as the word ‘Jindyworobak’ signifies) the evolving Australian literary tradi-
tion to aspects of the Aboriginal culture through use of images and symbols
drawn from Aboriginal life and culture, allusions and mythological references
grounded in the Aboriginal world. Ashcroft’s discussion concludes with a re-
ference to the evolution of writing from the indigenous groups, the Maori,
the Inuit, and the Aborigines and their capacity, because of their doubly mar-
ginalized position, “to subvert received assumptions about literature.”24 The
relationship between indigenous and settler populations, particularly in the
decolonized landscape, is not really explored.
It is Terry Goldie, a Canadian critic, who has, to date, made perhaps the
most significant contribution to settler-culture poetics in his explicit recog-
nition of the centrality of the figure of the indigene in settler aspirations to-
wards belonging. (His analysis of modes of representation of the figure of
the indigene, however, shows some strain in the application of his criteria to
the works of Patrick White. This will be discussed in some detail in the con-
cluding chapter of the present study.) He has enunciated what he has termed
the concept of ‘indigenization’ as follows:
When the Canadian looks at the Indian, the Indian is other and alien. But the
Indian is indigenous and therefore cannot be alien. So the Canadian must be
alien. But how can the Canadian be alien within Canada? […]. The importance
of the alien within cannot be overstated. In their need to become “native”, to
belong here, whites in Canada, New Zealand and Australia have adopted a pro-
cess which I have termed “indigenization”.25

23 See Brian Elliott, The Jindyworobaks (St. Lucia: U of Queensland P , 1979), for the most
comprehensive account of this movement.
24 Ashcroft, Griffiths & Tiffin, The Empire Writes Back, 142.

25 Terry Goldie, Fear and Temptation, 12–13.

12 WRITING THE NATION ]

He sees White’s work as among ‘the most resonant in the history of the indi-
gene.”26 In making a comparison between Patrick White and the Canadian
writer Rudy Wiebe, Goldie also makes the perceptive point that while both
writers are concerned with mystical illumination and individuation they are
simultaneously concerned with modes of ‘writing the nation’:
Wiebe and White are two of the most acclaimed novelists of their respective
countries. Like much of twentieth-century fiction, their texts are often intro-
spective exploration of personal values. Yet as might be expected in post-colo-
nial societies that introspection is linked with what might seem a quite “extro-
spective” impulse, the definition of a nation.27

Australian critics have yet to contribute substantially to this discussion of the

quest for indigeneity in white Australian narratives of belonging. Bob Hodge
and Vijay Mishra’s joint publication discusses some related issues in their
work The Dark Side of the Dream. Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin, whose semi-
nal work in the broader area of postcolonial theory has been widely ac-
claimed, have not so far themselves devoted particular attention to settler-
culture theory as a specific category, despite the fact that they live and work
mostly in Australian academia. Gareth Griffiths has written on the potential
dangers of seeking ‘authenticity’ in the recording of Aboriginal experience.28
He has also written appreciatively of the work of Hodge and Mishra in high-
lighting issues related to Aboriginal writing. Bill Ashcroft has presented in-
sightful conference papers on issues related to the Australian scene.29 As far
back as the 1980s he was exploring the need for an Australian literary theory

26 Goldie, Fear and Temptation, 192.

27 Fear and Temptation, 191.
28 Gareth Griffiths, “The Myth of Authenticity,” in De-Scribing Empire: Post-Colonialism

and Textuality, ed. Chris Tiffin & Alan Lawson (London: Routledge, 1994): 70–85.
29 See his presentations at successive A S A A conferences: “Beyond Identity: Australia’s

Post-Colonial Future,” in New Directions in Australian Studies, ed. Cynthia vanden Driesen &
Adrian Mitchell (New Delhi: Prestige, 2000): 56–67; “Shashi Tharoor’s The Great Indian
Novel and Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda,” in Austral-Asian Encounters: From Literature and
Women’s Studies to Politics and Tourism, ed. Cynthia vanden Driesen & Satendra Nandan
(New Delhi: Prestige, 2003): 226–42; and “Home and Horizon,” in Diaspora: The Aus-
tralasian Experience, ed. Cynthia vanden Driesen & Ralph Crane (New Delhi: Prestige,
2005): 45–58.
] Recovery From Amnesia 13

appropriate to the study of Australian literature.30 Later on, he discusses

some of these ideas at some length, pointing out that “for over 150 years
Australian cultural nationalists have been saying the same things and meeting
with similar responses of apathy and opposition.” The reason for this is that,
despite the intensity of the nationalist formulations, the structure of power-
relations within which it first emerged has not changed. The continuing
divide between the imperial centre and the colonial margin means a continu-
ing awareness of the empire as the centre of cultural values and simulta-
neously a conflation of culture with high culture. It also results in essentialist
myths of identity in the need to establish independence. A move beyond lite-
rature is also necessary, since the study of literature perpetuates eurocentric
values and there is a potential danger of students becoming alienated from
their own culture. What is required is a push beyond concepts of nation and
eurocentric limitations towards positioning the study of Australian literature
“within the syncretic discourse of post-colonial writing in English”: i.e.
writings from India, Africa, and the Caribbean, as well as those of other
settler cultures. This “maximises the capacity for locating topoi of difference
and subverts the patriarchal nature of most nationalist mythology.” This
push beyond nation must also be a push beyond literature that is inherently
eurocentric in its values.
While these are valuable insights, there is a need to acknowledge that
there are deep-seated differences in the postcolonial situation of settler cul-
tures and those of countries like India and Africa. The syncretist move ad-
vocated needs first to accommodate the presence of a racial and cultural
Other within the settler cultures, an Other, moreover, that is the first owner
of the land the settler now occupies. The innate doubleness of settler-subject
identity is precisely what adds value and interest to the potential contribution
of writers from these regions to the postcolonial debate. While there can be
no doubt of the value of the moves Ashcroft suggests, there are attendant
complexities which must not be elided.31 Earlier in his article, he states that
“On Sycorax’s island we are Mirandas, identifying with neither Prospero nor
Caliban.” Writers from the ‘Third World’ can (as George Lamming does)
identify with Caliban, but for the settler-invader who chooses to remain on

30 Bill Ashcroft, “Postscript: Towards an Australian Literary Theory,” New Literatures

Review 6–9 (1979–81): 1–9.
31 Bill Ashcroft, “The Post-Colonial Re-Vision of Australian Literature,” New Literatures

Review 18–20 (1989–90): 1–7.

14 WRITING THE NATION ]

the island of Caliban, Miranda is no more a paradigm than Prospero, since

Miranda also leaves the island. How, then, does the white settler carve out a
space on the island if not by negotiating a new contract with Caliban, one
that recognizes the latter’s right to inheritance and reinstates his status as
fellow being? Shakespeare’s play does not provide for this eventuality. The
settler, instead of simply aligning himself with his European inheritance, may
have to create new tropes to speak his new situation in the land and the
forging of a new relationship with the erstwhile colonized subject.
In their definition of ‘settler’ in their book of postcolonial terminology,
Ashcroft et al. quote the definition given in the Shorter Oxford Dictionary:
‘one who settles in a new country a colonist (1695)’ and, ‘generally: One who
settles in a place as resident (1815)’. Within colonial discourse the settlers gene-
rally referred to are Europeans who moved from their countries of origin to
European colonies with the intention of remaining. Increasingly, the term
‘settler-invader’ has been used to emphasize the less than benign repercussions
of such ‘settlement’, particularly on indigenous peoples.32

Implicit in this comment is the recognition that the relationship with the in-
digenous people is a crucial factor in this process of ‘settling’ or ‘remaining’.
Obviously there is need to take cognizance of their past, which must also still
affect their present in determining settler subjectivity, but so far there still
seems to be a vacuum in the theorizing that needs to explore the re-align-
ment required to negotiate the transition from settler–invader to settler–
indigene. It is the creative writers who have begun to explore the terrain, and
perhaps the theorists will follow in their wake.
Alan Lawson has offered some cogent points regarding the centrality of
the figure of the indigene, though there is a need to carry through some of
his reflections to a more definitive conclusion. While he has defined in-
cisively the positionality of the settler as being balanced between two First
Worlds – that of the European Imperium, and that of the First Nation repre-
sented by the Aboriginal world – a balance, as he puts it, “between mother
and other,” there seems to be a foreclosing of the implications of issues re-
lated to the latter position in various statements made in his several articles
on these issues. He has articulated an important point that has implications
for this particular study:

32 Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths & Helen Tiffin, Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies

(London & New York: Routledge, 1998): 210.

] Recovery From Amnesia 15

The cartography of Second World cultural space might also enable us to map
the shift in study of national literatures away from examinations of representa-
tions of self – national identity as identity politics – towards examinations of
representations of the nation’s other – paradigmatically, but not exclusively, re-
presentations of the Indigene. In terms of the resistance to the dual inscriptions
it is a shift in anxieties about mediation from the mother to the other.33

Lawson’s focus in this essay seems to be more on the valency of the study of
settler cultures as particular sites of value that are not to be to collapsed into
“some larger and unspecified narrative of empire or metropolis,” and he
mentions here the need, in avowing the actual processes of colonization, not
to forget “the entangled agency of one’s history as a subject with that of the
displaced Native/colonized subject.” There must still be further discussion
of the need for negotiation with the contingency of the Aboriginal presence,
particularly since the trope of the ‘dying race’ is now hopelessly outmoded in
relation to the Australian Aborigine. Mark Williams shows that it was aban-
doned much earlier in relation to the Maori of New Zealand, and in any case
included a range of different and ambivalent resonances.34
This is where the work of Patrick White acquires heightened significance.
What are the tropes that are discernible in the White texts selected for study
here? Going native? Dying race? Miscegenation? Cannibalism? These are all
present, yet couched in modalities that stretch beyond the boundaries of the
anxiety discussed by Lawson. They construct the possibility not simply of the
settler standing before the indigene, but one where a white settler (and a
woman at that) can claim, “I was one of them.”35 The possibility of the white
invader’s ultimately undergoing the transformation into white indigene is
suggested. The texts indeed incorporate such tropes as those of cannibalism,
even miscegenation. These were once designed to underline the perpetual
Otherness, hence exclusion, of the indigene, but now operate, rather, within
a mode that expands the possibilities for incorporating the indigene within
the narrative of nation. If there is anxiety, there seems also to be an aware-
ness of possible new horizons, even the attainment of the destiny intimated
by Frantz Fanon – the coexistence of white and black races – articulated
from the perspective of the black person whose humanity has been histori-

33 Alan Lawson, “Postcolonial Theory and the Settler Subject,” Essays on Canadian
Writing 56 (Fall 1955): 30.
34 Williams, “Ways of Fading in ‘Maoriland’.”

35 Patrick White, A Fringe of Leaves (London: Jonathan Cape, 1976): 364.

16 WRITING THE NATION ]

cally denied but who, refusing to be imprisoned by that history, wishes to

move beyond it:

[…]. I find myself suddenly in the world and I recognize that I have one right
alone: That of demanding human behaviour from the other.
[…]. There is no white world, there is no white ethic, any more than there is a
white intelligence.
There are in every part of the world men who search […].
The disaster of the man of color lies in the fact that he was enslaved.
The disaster and the inhumanity of the white man lie in the fact that some-
where he has killed man […].
I, the man of color, want only this [...].
That the tool never possess the man. That the enslavement of man by man
cease forever. That is, of one by another […].
The Negro is not. Any more than the white man.
Both must turn their backs on the inhuman voices which were those of their
respective ancestors in order that authentic communication be possible. Before
it can adopt a positive voice, freedom requires an effort at disalienation […].
Superiority? Inferiority?
Why not the simple effort to touch the other, to feel the other, to explain the
other to myself?36

As indicated by Slemon in the passage quoted earlier, creative writers seem

to have forged ahead of the theorists in exploring the diverse possibilities of
constructing the unique identity of the postcolonial subject. The strategies
they have worked through are wide and varied. Some writers explore the
changed relationship to the Imperial power. White himself does this in so
many of his other works, including the texts taken up for consideration here;
Peter Carey ‘writes back’ to the Empire, reversing the Imperialist history that
would consign the convict to the limbo of guilt and corruption in Jack Maggs
(1997), and reconstructs the peripheral yet guilt-laden figure of Magwitch in
Dickens’ Great Expectations as the central heroic figure of Maggs; or, in The
True Story of the Kelly Gang (2000), restores both humanity and heroism to the
figure of the bushranger and interrogates the role of British justice in the
colonies. For so many contemporary writers – poets and dramatists as well
as writers of fiction – the Imperialist influence that dominates Australian life
is now the U S A rather than England. So much of Carey’s other work, parti-
cularly in the short stories, displays the same awareness.

36 Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 229–31.

] Recovery From Amnesia 17

For this study, the literary exploration of the theme of the indigenization
of the white settler is of particular interest. While there are interesting syn-
ergies between works by Canadian writers like Rudy Wiebe and Robert
Kroetsch and New Zealand writers like Keri Hulme who have explored this
theme in different ways, White is probably the earliest Australian writer to
have embarked on this complex project. Of the others, perhaps the most
striking has been David Malouf’s Remembering Babylon (1993), which offers an
exploration of this theme of the possibilities for white indigenization which
is more subtle and sensitive than some critics are prepared to recognize.37 In
Tim Winton’s work, the concept of white indigenization is never far from
the surface of every text. Nicholas Hasluck has added his own contribution
to the project in his work entitled A Country Without Music (1990).38
There is a remarkable degree of consistency in the strategies at play in the
White texts explored in this study which operate to exorcise the alterity of
the indigenous Other. To appreciate the modalities at work in these texts,
they need to be juxtaposed against an archetypal colonialist work like Con-
rad’s Heart of Darkness, a text which explores the classic imperialist theme of
“Europeans performing acts of imperial mastery in (or about) Africa.”39 The
African novelist Chinua Achebe’s reaction to this work as ‘racist’ was cited
earlier in this chapter. Said also sees it as the paradigmatic imperialist text:

This imperial attitude is, I believe, beautifully captured in the complicated and
rich narrative form of Conrad’s great novella Heart of Darkness written between
1898 and 1899 […] underlying Marlow’s inconclusiveness, his evasions, his
arabesque meditations on his feelings and ideas, is the unrelenting course of the
journey itself, which, despite all the many obstacles, is sustained through the
jungle, through time, through hardship, to the heart of it all, Kurtz’s ivory-
trading empire. Conrad wants us to see how Kurtz’ great looting adventure,
Marlow’s journey up the river, and the narrative itself all share a common
theme: Europeans performing acts of imperial mastery and will in (or about)
Africa […]. Conrad could probably never have used Marlow to present anything
other than an imperialist worldview, given what was available for either Conrad

37 See Suvendrini Perera, “Unspeakable Bodies: Representing the Aboriginal in Austra-

lian Critical Discourse,” Meridian 13.1 (1994): 15–26.
38 See Srilata Ravi’s analysis of this text in “Ambiguity and Indigeneity in Hasluck’s The

Country Without Music,” in Diaspora: The Australasian Experience, ed. Cynthia vanden Driesen
& Ralph Crane (New Delhi: Prestige, 2005): 205–12.
39 Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism, 25.
18 WRITING THE NATION ]

or Marlow to see of the non-European at the time. Independence was for

whites and for Europeans: the lesser or subject peoples were to be ruled;
science, learning, history emanated form the West….40

In the “Introduction” to Orientalism, Said indicates some of the pointers in

texts that could indicate its underpinning ideology. These he identifies as
“strategic location” – the positioning of the speaker/narrator in relation to
the situation/space/event being presented; also, the images and motifs
circulating in the text.41 Application of these in an analysis of Heart of Dark-
ness enables an understanding of how the African emerges as wholly Other to
the European, supporting the orientalist perception of the black as an in-
ferior being, deserving only of enslavement and colonization. All three of the
White texts selected for discussion can be usefully juxtaposed against this
classic colonialist work. In Voss and A Fringe of Leaves, parallel structures such
as the passage of the white protagonist into the wilderness of the black world
and the encounter with the racial Other are clearly discernible. With Riders in
the Chariot, there is an ironic reversal: the black man finds himself in a land
once his own but now unalterably the possession of the white colonizers; a
land in which he, the ‘native son’, is now regarded as the outcast and must
survive as best he can.
The varied tropes of white superiority as against the innate inferiority, if
not outright bestiality, of the black that characterize the colonialist text are
juxtaposed with the related but opposed constructs in Patrick White’s novels.
A consistent pattern of reversal of colonialist strategies may be traced which
also simultaneously accommodates a range of variations within the sub-sec-
tions of the somewhat schematic, but (hopefully) useful, moves identified.
These are: restoration of the autonomy of the black world as against the
colonialist construction of the black world as supine and powerless; reversal
of the hegemonic relationship between whites and blacks, where the colo-
nialist text suggests the habitual and inevitable dominance of white over
black; the potential transformation of white colonizer into indigene (in the
place of the colonialist text’s suggestion of the non-European as sub-human
and degenerate, wholly Other). Lastly, an awareness is established of the
outcome of the black/white encounter as being endowed with salvific possi-
bilities for the European rather than one that triggers his moral and cultural

40 Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism, 24–26.

41 Said, Orientalism, 20–21.
] Recovery From Amnesia 19

degeneration if not held rigidly within the established patterns of Imperial

control, with the black being the recipient always of the uplifting influence of
the European. Comparisons with Conrad’s novella enable the crucial differ-
ences in White’s novels to emerge with clarity.
What follows is a ground plan for analysis of the strategies operative in
the three White texts selected, in each of which the appearance of Aboriginal
figures raises the issue of their significance in the Australian context. In the
detailed discussions of the individual novels, my commentary enlarges on the
‘affiliations’ of the narrative (in the Saidian sense). Reference to narratives of
exploration in the discussion of Voss or to the enormous archive of Eliza
Fraser narratives in the discussion of A Fringe of Leaves enables the tracing of
the affiliative network that connects the text to history, society, and the cul-
ture from which it emanates. In Said’s own words, “To recreate the affiliative
network is therefore to make visible, to give materiality back to, the strands
holding the text to society, author and culture.”42
A notable omission in this study is a focus on what Gordon Collier de-
scribes as the feature that most attracted him to the work of Patrick White:

[…] the almost palpable density and enigmatic ductus of the language.[…] it was
the indrawing power of White’s language that granted me access to his main
strength, which is his understanding of human psychology.43

This I have been obliged to regard as a given. While such work as Collier’s
stands almost alone in its impressive analysis of all aspects of the novelist’s
style in a particular novel, this study focuses on other novelistic devices that
establish White as far-seeing postcolonial writer engaged simultaneously in
the role of public intellectual as that has been described by Said. Apart from
noting devices suggested by Said as useful pointers to the ideology of a text:
the kind of “narrative voice,” “the type of structure,” “the kinds of images,
themes, motifs” that circulate in a text, there is no attempt to explore the
writer’s style, his use of language, in any great depth.44 This study is primarily
concerned with the ideology that underpins the work and much time and
space are devoted to tracing its ‘affiliations’ in accordance with Saidian
beliefs that this approach can enhance appreciation of the various ideological
factors at play within the construction of a text.

42 Edward Said, The World, the Text and the Critic (Cambridge M A : Harvard U P , 1983): 175.
43 Gordon Collier, The Rocks and Sticks of Words, 1.
44 Said, Orientalism, 20.
20 WRITING THE NATION ]

Autonomy of the black world

In Conrad’s novella, the blacks appear singularly powerless besides the
power and agency of the Europeans. They offer no obstacle to the imperial
passage of the Europeans into the heartland of the black world. Those blacks
Marlow encounters on the shore appear wholly incapable of agency, lying
around supine in attitudes of extreme despair, captive, sick, dying:

Six black men advanced in a file, toiling up the path […]. I could see every rib,
the joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope: each had an iron collar on his
neck, and all were connected together like a chain whose bights swung between
them rhythmically clinking […]. These men could by no stretch of imagination
be called enemies. They were called criminals, and the outraged law […] had
come to them an insoluble mystery from the sea. All their meagre breasts
panted together, the violently dilated nostrils quivered, the eyes stared stonily
uphill They passed me within six inches, without a glance, with that complete
deathlike indifference of unhappy savages.45

A little further on, he comes across another group, workers in a vast artificial
hole in the ground for which Marlow could discern no purpose, while
others, too weak to work, have withdrawn to die:

Black shapes crouched, lay, sat between the trees, leaning against the trunks,
clinging to the earth, half coming out, half-effaced within the dim light, in all the
attitudes of pain, abandonment and despair […]. They were dying slowly – it
was very clear. They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were
nothing earthly now - nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation […].
While I stood horror-struck, one of these creatures rose to his hands and knees
and crossing his shins in front of him and after a time let his woolly head fall on
his breastbone. (HD. 17–18)

In Heart of Darkness, the planning of an expedition into the heartland of

Africa shows no evidence of an African power that needs to be consulted or
appeased. Marlow needs only to gain the permission of authorities centred in
Europe, and nowhere along the journey into the interior does he encounter
any sign of black agency. The only ‘attack’ the boat faces is one that has been

45 Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness: An Authoritative Text, Background and Sources, Essays

in Criticism, ed. Robert Kimbrough (1898; Norton Critical Editions; 1963; New York &
London: W.W. Norton, 2nd ed. 1971): 16. Further page references are in the main text,
with “HD.”
] Recovery From Amnesia 21

ordered by the white man Kurtz. The whites are always already in control of
the black world. There is no sense of an alternative culture, of regulated
human activity and an ordered community life. No wonder Achebe felt
moved to declare that this was a work which rehearses “prejudices and in-
sults from which a section of mankind has suffered untold agonies and
atrocities in the past […] a story in which the very humanity of black peoples
is called in question.”46 Marlow is sensitized only to the markers of Euro-
pean presence: the trading stations, the meetings with isolated Europeans,
the ship firing into an ‘empty’ continent, behind which is the opacity of the
wilderness.
In both Voss and A Fringe of Leaves, the black/white encounter takes place
in a precolonial world that appears to be set in a region of Australia where
the blacks still preserve their autonomous status. This is no world of edenic
innocence (the only alternative, according to white perceptions, to that of the
primitive brute) but one in which the observer is made aware of an inde-
pendent order opposed to that of the incursive whites, a world obeying its
own rituals and exacting its own allegiances, which are not those of the white
world, though sometimes the most startling parallels may be seen to exist. In
Riders in the Chariot, the black man is marginalized in a world now successfully
colonized by the whites, but he can still reveal an inner resilience and capa-
city to resist the pressures of white culture.

Reversal of the white/black hegemonic relationship

The customary hegemonic relationship of white to black in the colonialist
world remains incontrovertible in Heart of Darkness. Kurtz has set himself up
as a ruler in the depths of the continent and even in illness is able to maintain
his authority over the blacks. His ‘rescuers’ fear they would all be “done for”
unless he is able to “say the right thing” to his followers, and Kurtz achieves
just that:

I saw the man on the stretcher sit up. lank and with an uplifted arm, above
the shoulders of the bearers […]. I could not hear a sound, but through my
glasses I saw the thin arm extended commandingly, the lower jaw moving, the
eyes of that apparition shining darkly far in its bony head […]. His covering
had fallen off and his body emerged from it pitiful and appalling as from a
winding sheet […]. It was as though an animated image of death carved out

46 Chinua Achebe, “An Image of Africa,” 10.

22 WRITING THE NATION ]

of old ivory had been shaking its hand with menaces at a motionless crowd of
men made of dark and glittering bronze […]. He fell back suddenly […]. I
noticed that the crowd of savages was vanishing without any perceptible move-
ment of retreat. (HD. 60–61)

The orientalist text constructs the black as degenerate and inferior, deserving
only of enslavement by the white. Marlow is surprised that a black could
even be capable of serving on the boat as a fireman:

He was an improved specimen; he could fire up a vertical boiler. He was there

below me, and, upon my word to look at him was as edifying as seeing a dog in
a parody of breeches and a feather hat, walking on his hind legs. (HD. 37)

Brantlinger points out how this attitude manifested itself even in the fiction
written for boys in the nineteenth century. In Coral Island, R.M. Ballantyne’s
best seller of 1858, the three shipwrecked English boys take counsel from
each other about how they should proceed. One outlines his plans for taking
possession of the island “in the name of the king,” and so entering the ser-
vice of the black inhabitants: “Of course we’ll rise, naturally, to the top of
affairs. White men always do in savage countries.”47 The power of the white
man in the colonized world is absolute. As a character in Samuel Selvon’s
novel A Brighter Sun (set on the island of Trinidad, another scenario of white
colonialism) advises a less sentient countryman:

“Listen, is one ting yuh have to learn quick, and dat is dat wite people is God
in dis country, boy. Was de same ting wen I uses to work in de grocery. Was
always wite people first. Black people like we don’t stand ah chance.”
“But man, I ain’t black. I is Indian.”
“Don’t mind! As long as yuh ain’t wite, dey does call yuh black wedder yuh
coolie or nigger or chinee […].”48

While Kurtz’s black followers are obviously distressed by the fact of his
being taken away, they are powerless to prevent it. His lover, a splendid
African woman, despite the obvious suggestions of enormous strength and
vitality, presents an eloquent study in powerlessness, particularly in her final
gesture of impotence, a silent raising of her clenched fists to the skies.

47 Quoted in Patrick Brantlinger, “Victorians and Africans: The Genealogy of the Myth
of the Dark Continent,” 221.
48 Samuel Selvon, A Brighter Sun (1952; Harlow, Essex: Longman, 1995): 95.
] Recovery From Amnesia 23

As Voss’s expedition moves into the wilderness, the dependence of the

white on the black becomes apparent. Even the native blacks attached to the
expedition show they will not be trammelled by white urgencies. With the
disruption and gradual weakening of the party, the black power comes into
its own. Voss and the remnants of his group are captured and Voss is put to
death. In A Fringe of Leaves, the white woman is relegated to the status of
slave of the community. In Riders in the Chariot, the part-Aboriginal Alf is
shown to be able, surprisingly, to reverse the subordinate role imposed on
him by the whites whom he encounters.

Transformation of settler–invader into settler–indigene

The very humanity of the black is called in question in orientalist narrative.
In Heart of Darkness, the circulation of epithets such as ‘devils’, ‘cannibals’,
’savages’, perceptions of the blacks from Marlow’s distanced position on the
shore, are not so much of whole human beings as of “a whirl of black limbs,
a mass of hands clapping, of feet stamping, of bodies swaying, of eyes
rolling” (HD. 36), details that establish the savage ‘Otherness’ of the blacks.
The detail of cannibalism underlines the savagery of these barely human
creatures. Kurtz’s comment, after the earlier excursus on the possibilities of
bringing light and civilization to these beings is “Exterminate the brutes.”
The merest suggestion that these beings could be connected to the human
race is unsettling for Marlow:

The earth seemed unearthly, we are accustomed to look upon the shackled form
of a conquered monster […]. It was unearthly, and the men were – No, they
were not inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled and leaped and
spun and made horrid faces but what thrilled you was just the thought of their
humanity – like yours – the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and
passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes it was ugly enough but if you were man enough
you would admit to your self that there was in you just the faintest trace of a
response to the terrible frankness of that noise[…]. (HD. 36)

Commenting on the idea of the “crossing over” of white settler into indige-
nous space, Bill Ashcroft stated:

I would be careful about […] constructing indigeneity. You need to be very

clear what you mean here. Obviously I agree with it since I wrote about it in The
Empire Writes Back but the striving for indigeneity is not the same as achieving it.
24 WRITING THE NATION ]

[…] But you should stress the extent to which he takes risks and goes where
angels fear to tread. Post-colonial doesn’t mean only aboriginal.49

Striving for it is as much as one can point to; the concept of actually achiev-
ing it remains an ideal construct. Still, the possibility needs to be articulated,
and this is what the ‘crossings over’ are doing in White’s novels explored in
this study. The gamble is being taken by the writer in suggesting these possi-
bilities. The critic can only highlight the tendencies discerned in the text.
White seems to be accepting the challenge set before the writer in settler-
culture space. In negotiating the challenges of the ‘ambivalence of emplace-
ment’ (to use Slemon’s phrase) with all the contradictions and ambiguities
that are part of settler subjectivity, the literary artist can make progress be-
cause of the imaginative leaps and contradictions that are permitted the
writer; a kind of poetic licence which is not available to the literary critic.
Both Slemon and Lawson have emphasized the importance of the writer
in settler-culture space. Alan Lawson has pinpointed the special responsi-
bility of the writer: “There is, then, for colonial writers […] a psychological
responsibility to find not only […] ‘the usable past’ but also the ‘usable here,
the usable new, the usable us, and the usable tongue’: to define, that is,
images of identity, of community, of history, of place.” The implicit recogni-
tion here is that in both Canada and Australia there is an assumption that it
was part of the writer’s task to provide a sense of national identity.50 In out-
lining his theory of the essential “ ambivalence of emplacement” in the posi-
tion of the settler, Slemon has pointed out how it is that the increased impor-
tance of the literary writer, as compared with the critical theorist, in these
contexts derives from the fact that these the literary artists can work out the
“necessary entanglement of anti-colonial resistances within the colonialist
machineries they seek to displace” without being bound by the restrictions
that circumscribe the critical writers of remaining “grounded in the ideology
of unitariness and coherence, and specific argumentative drive,” which are
the necessary conditions of their practice. Since the artist is not similarly ob-
ligated to the limitations of logic and argumentative coherence, one can
recognize also the appositeness of Lawson’s suggestion that the ‘fit’ of the

49
Bill Ashcroft, personal communication, e-mail of August 2006.
50
Alan Lawson, “Pattern, Preferences and Preoccupations: The Discovery of Nation-
ality in Australian and Canadian Literatures,” in Theory and Practice in Comparative Studies:
Canada, Australia and New Zealand, ed. Peter Crabbe (Sydney: A N Z A C S , 1983): 168.
] Recovery From Amnesia 25

new paradigms that emerge should be gauged in accordance with the prin-
ciples operative with the linguistic metaphor of ‘zeugma’ where a loose ap-
proximation may serve the purpose of conveying meaning better than an
exact fit.51
In White’s novels, a process is set going that suggests the partial trans-
formation of the white ‘invader’ into indigene within the movement of the
narrative. The transformation appears to encompass both the physical and
the psychic aspects of the protagonists. In Riders in the Chariot, the merging of
black into white is inscribed in the very body of the half-caste, Alf Dubbo;
this, and his life experience, suggests that a reversal of the transformation of
the indigene is also possible. The irreversible alterity of the racial Other is
called radically into question. The convict figure acquires a particular interest
in this context. Both in Voss and in A Fringe of Leaves, the convict figure
evinces a kind of bonding with the land and other characteristics associated
with the indigene; the construct is heavy with implications for the candidacy
of the convict for the position of white indigene in the colonialist world.

The outcome
In Conrad’s novella, the outcome of the European’s contact with the dark,
sub-human black world is summarized in the words of the dying Kurtz:
“The horror, the horror!” Whether this is a comment on his perception of
the corruption in his own heart or in that of humanity in general, or on his
experiences in the black world, his words also encapsulate an observation on
the events of the narrative which have generated considerable trauma, ending
with the urge on the part of the European to flee contact with a black world
which debases and corrupts him. Patrick Brantlinger is impatient of such
views as Lionel Trilling’s which would depict Kurtz as “ a hero of the spirit.”
In his view, such a response makes Trilling himself culpable as an apologist
for the horrors of the particular imperialist episode that was at the core of
Heart of Darkness. Brantlinger’s condemnation of Kurtz is uncompromising:
Kurtz has not merely lost faith with civilization and therefore experimented
with Stygian authenticity- he is also a murderer, perhaps a cannibal. He has
allowed his idolators to make human sacrifices in his honor and, like Captain

51
Alan Lawson, “Proximities: From Asymptote to Zeugma,” in Postcolonizing the Com-
monwealth: Studies in Literature and Culture, ed. Rowland Smith (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid
Laurier U P , 2000): 19–35.
26 WRITING THE NATION ]

Rom, has decorated his corner of hell with the skulls of his victims. Perhaps
Trilling values Kurtz as a hero of the spirit in part because he himself does not
see clearly the horror of the deaths of several million Congolese are a high price
to pay for the illumination of Stygian authenticity […]. Trilling’s interpretation
of Kurtz’ dying words – ‘The horror! The horror!’ – simply does not take ac-
count of what transpired in Leopold’s Congo. His focus is European civilization
not Africa and so he reaches his bizarre conclusion: “For me it is still ambi-
guous whether Kurtz’ famous death-bed cry refers to the approach of death or
to his experience of savage life.”52

Marlow describes thus his struggle to compel Kurtz to return with him to
‘civilization’:

I tried to break the spell – the heavy mute spell of the wilderness –that –seemed
to draw him to its pitiless breast by the awakening of forgotten and brutal
instincts by the memory of gratified and monstrous passions […].
But his soul was mad, being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within
itself, and by Heavens! I tell you, it had gone mad. I had- for my sins I sup-
pose, to go through the ordeal of looking into it myself. No eloquence could
have been so withering to one’s belief in mankind as his final burst of
sincerity. (67–68)

Voss’s immersion in the Aboriginal world brings self-knowledge and with it

a saving humility. He is forced to recognize his human limitations; the
Judaeo-Christian philosophy of the novel suggests that Voss, through the
attainment of humility, attains spiritual wholeness and salvation. Along with
spiritual wholeness Voss (and Laura), as well as a number of lesser spirits,
progress towards an understanding of their adoptive country and how they
might belong in it. In A Fringe of Leaves, Ellen learns acceptance of the limi-
tations of her own wilful and sensual nature. Along with this she acquires an
understanding of the narrowness of the line that divides the ‘savage’ black
world from the ‘civilized’. In Riders in the Chariot, Alf Dubbo’s encounter with
the white visionaries engenders awareness of the spiritual affinity between
him and the white protagonists and an understanding that acts of human
cruelty are not perpetrated solely on members of the black race. The black/
white encounter in these texts emerges as redolent with redemptive possi-

52 Patrick Brantlinger, “Epilogue: Kurtz’s ‘Darkness’ and Conrad’s ‘Heart of Dark-

ness’,” in Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness, 270.

] Recovery From Amnesia 27

bilities, and is suggestive of the potential of the indigene to contribute to the

Australian narrative of the nation.
Despite the seeming failure of the Jindyworobaks to register a permanent
line of continuity in the Australian poetic tradition, one of the most success-
ful poets of the group captured, in a poem with the highly evocative title
“Would I Might Find My Country,” something of the yearning for belonging
that appears to animate the white protagonists in these selected novels of
Patrick White, even though that yearning may not emerge as fully articulated
in the novelistic texts:

Would I might find my country as the blacks

come in and lean their spears up in the scrub,
and crouch and light their flickering fires […]
Would I might find my people as the blacks
sit with their lubras, children and tired dogs
their dilly bags […]
and talk in quiet calling voices while
the blood-deep crimson flower of sunset burns
in smouldering ash and fume behind the trees,
behind the thin grassed ridges of their land
that is their home wherever they may camp.53

]^

53 Roland Robinson, “Would I Might Find My Country,” in The Jindyworobaks, sel., ed.

& intro. Brian Elliott (St. Lucia: U of Queensland P , 1979): 126.

2 Voss

he is there in the country and always will be. (V. 443)

T
HE NOVEL VOSS CENTRES ON THE FIGURE OF AN
E X P L O R E R , and White has cited the journals of Leichhardt and
Eyre as being the chief sources on which he drew for the composi-
tion of the novel.1 In the process, of course, what emerges is a work of the
imagination very different from the original materials, but there is consider-
able interest in tracing the possible interconnections, the “affiliations” which
Said sees as crucial in enhancing a sense of the imbrication of a text in the
world from which it springs. The role of the explorer in the history of imper-
ialism is both crucial and paradoxical. The figure of the explorer acquires an
aura of heroism, of lonely courage and endurance, as he is pictured battling
uneven odds on foreign terrain and pitted against savage, hostile forces. Yet,
simultaneously, he was always a tool of European imperialism, and his heroic
endeavours tend to mask the fact that he represented the vanguard of the
huge mechanism of empire that, in time, placed entire continents under the
dominion of the European. The account of the achievements of the ex-
plorers had tremendous mass appeal for the public of their time:

The books that the explorers wrote took the Victorian reading public by storm.
In the first few months after its publication in 1857, Livingstone’s Missionary
Travels sold seventy thousand copies and made its author wealthy and so famous
that he had to avoid situations where he might be mobbed by admirers. If

1 Patrick White, “The Prodigal Son” (1958), in Patrick White Speaks (Sydney: Primavera

Press, 1989): 13–17.

30 WRITING THE NATION ]

Livingstone was already a national hero in the late 1850’s he was a national saint
by the time of his last African journey in 1872 […]. The great explorer writings
are non-fictional quest romances in which the heroes struggle through en-
chanted or bedevilled lands towards a goal […].These humble but heroic
authors move from adventure to adventure against a dark infernal backdrop –
where there are no other characters of equal stature – only demonic and
bedevilled savages[…].2

Even if starting out initially with humanitarian aims, as Livingstone did, all of
the projects of exploration eventually contributed to imperialist encroach-
ment. This, as Brantlinger notes, is so much more evident in the career of
Stanley (who has, in fact, been cited as one of the several possible real-life
models for Kurtz in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness):

The purpose behind his work in the Congo for King Leopold II of Belgium was
not far removed from the aims of the Eldorado Exploring Expedition in Heart
of Darkness: “To tear treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with
no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a
safe.”3

It might be thought, then, that there is considerable irony in the use of the
figure of an explorer in the text of Voss as the protagonist destined to meta-
morphosize, in the course of the narrative, from settler–invader into settler–
indigene. Yet there is an inner logic also in such a choice, especially in the
context of settler cultures. These were the first individuals among the in-
vading Europeans to establish an intimate acquaintance with the alien land
and, indeed, with the indigenous peoples. Explorers have a special heroic
status in the Australian context. Henry Reynolds writes:

Explorers walk tall through the pages of Australian historiography […]. In a

society which lacked substantial military traditions until 1914, the explorers
bulked out the otherwise thin ranks of national heroes.4

2 Brantlinger, “Victorians and Africans: The Genealogy of the Myth of the Dark Conti-
nent,” 195.
3 “Victorians and Africans: The Genealogy of the Myth of the Dark Continent,” 196.

4 Henry Reynolds, ‘The land, the explorers and the Aborigines,” in Through White Eyes,

ed. Susan Jameson & Stuart Macintyre (Sydney: Allen & Unwin: 1990): 120–31.
] Voss 31

He cites at least half a dozen historians who have enunciated a similar thesis.
Eyre records his appreciation of help from his “fellow-colonists” and the
fact that he had spent eight years of residence in Australia prior to embarking
on the expedition.5 There is an intriguing paradox present in the accounts of
both Eyre and Leichhardt which the attentive reader can hardly fail to detect.
White seems, in Voss, to have drawn with bold inventiveness on the potential
present in these source materials to produce a work which narrates a lesson
for the emergent Australian nation. The explorers’ journals convey para-
doxical impressions of familiarity and alienness; of imperial indifference to
the questions of Aboriginal ownership along with dependence on and
bonding with the indigene; an inescapable sense of intimacy with the land
and a knowledge of its people born of the protracted physical, mental, and
emotional travails of the explorer and his alliance, however temporary and
self-seeking, with the indigene and with the land. The value for the indigene
that did not seem to show itself in the formal literary creations of the young
colony seems to have lain like a vein of untapped ore in the writings of the
explorers, waiting, it seems, for a writer like White to break it open.
The Leichhardt journals, particularly, show the explorer to be very much
the servant of his imperial masters as he advances through the region,
naming places, rivers, hills, and gorges after his various patrons and assis-
tants, imposing white suzerainty with total indifference to any question of
black ownership of the land.6 There is not a single mention of any enquiry
through their native guides, of the ‘locals’ they encountered along the way, of
the possible indigenous names of the places through which they passed,
though there were questions enough, wherever this was possible, regarding
names for plants, especially foods and parts of the body. It was indicative of
the imperialist mind-set that, despite the evidence to the contrary all around
them, the explorers saw this land as a terra nullius, to be filled with the white
presence and white naming. Alec Chisholm’s Strange New World, in retelling

5 Edward John Eyre, Journals of Expeditions of Discovery into Central Australia and Overland
From Adelaide to King George’s Sound, In the years 1840–1; Sent by the Colonists of South Australia,
With the Sanction and Support of the Government: Including an Account of the Manners and Customs of
the Aborigines and the State of Their Relations with Europeans, vol. 1 (1945; Australiana Facsmile
Editions No.7; Adelaide: Libraries Board of South Australia: 1964): vii.
6 See Ludwig Leichhardt, Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia from Moreton Bay to

Port Essington, a distance of over 3000 miles, during the years 1844–1845 (1847; Australian
Facsimile Editions No. 16; Adelaide: Libraries Board of South Australia, 1964).
32 WRITING THE NATION ]

the Leichhardt story decades later, is mostly concerned to present the flawed
nature of the individual explorer, but is itself written from within a euro-
centric perspective which never calls the rights of the white man into ques-
tion.7 It refers to “savages” and “wild men” with a carelessness that makes it
hard to accept it was revised as late as the 1950s.8 Yet, in Chisholm’s book,
which also contains the journal of the ornithologist Gilbert, who was later a
member of the ill-fated Leichhardt expedition (and the model for White’s
construction of the character of Palfreyman), the reader is brought up short
at the thoughtfulness of Gilbert’s reflections on what the consequences of
the explorer ‘discoveries’ would be for the native population.
At every stage of their progress through the lands they claimed for the
imperial power, there walked beside the explorer the black presence which
the power he served did not acknowledge even as existing in the land. Yet
many explorers did acknowledge the help of their black guides in generous
terms and both the Leichhardt and the Eyre journals contain such acknowl-
edgments. As Henry Reynolds puts it,

Aborigines played two, apparently contradictory roles in the saga of exploration

[…]. Attacks on explorers highlighted danger and underscored hardihood […].
But the other Aboriginal role was that of loyal and faithful servant – Forrest’s
Windich, Eyre’s Wylie, Kennedy’s Jacky-Jacky – who illustrated the benign con-
sequences of acculturation. Some of the explorers paid gracious tribute to their
black advisers and assessed Aboriginal abilities far higher than was usual at the
time.9

However, Reynolds comments, further, that the tendency was to attribute

the Aborigines’ bush skills to intuition rather than intellect, thereby using an
aspect of the indigene that could have attested racial superiority to establish
the reverse.

Autonomy of the black world

Within the text of the novel, the indigene emerges in both of these roles;
there is no simple divergence between them. What is most important is that

7 See Alec H. Chisholm, Brave New World: The Adventures of John Gilbert and Ludwig Leich-
hardt (1941; Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1955).
8 Said has indicated how such images and epithets indicate the underpinning orientalist

ideology of a text; see Orientalism, 21.

9 Henry Reynolds, “The land, the explorers and the aborigines,” 120–21.
] Voss 33

the indigenous presence constructed in the novel affirms its solidity and
strength in a mode which contrasts with the norm of colonialist narratives.
Where the black world in Conrad’s narrative appears to have no aspect of
social cohesiveness, no potential to offer any kind of resistance to the white
challenge, the black world in Voss is constructed as a solid, even an ominous,
presence, able and willing to mount a challenge to white intrusion. In both
Voss and A Fringe of Leaves, the oververweening white pride and power
become reduced to nothingness. Ruth Brown’s interesting assertion of a terra
nullius concept underpinning White’s construction of the narrative is not
really substantiated.10 The Aborigines are not simply agents in a spiritual pro-
cess, they have a substantial presence, which in customary colonialist por-
trayals is simply elided.
The novel Voss offers considerable evidence of departures from the origi-
nary explorer narratives as well as startling similarities. Marcel Aurousseau,
when invited to comment on the historical content of the novel, stated:
After reading it (the novel) I thought there was very little to say on the subject.
Voss was so clearly a novel, a work of the imagination, to be judged by the
standards we apply to fiction, but not to those which we apply to objective
historical studies […].11

Nevertheless, it is an illuminating exercise to note the ‘affiliations’ (in Saidian

terminology) of the text of the novel with the explorer narratives of Eyre and
Leichhardt which provided its source materials. Expanding the connections
of the text to other forms and narratives enhances a sense of its grounded-
ness in the materiality of its world even if the relationship to these source
materials is one of contrast.
There is no impression in either the Leichhardt or the Eyre journals of the
explorers being shadowed consistently by a particular group of Aborigines
with hostile intent. This is one important mode in which White’s novel has
departed from its source materials, and this relates directly, it would seem, to
the particular creative purpose behind its construction. The attack on the
Leichhardt group had to do with some misbehaviour on the part of the
native guides towards a particular group of natives. Eyre’s journal recounts
the revolt of its own native boys, who attempt to seize provisions and break

10 Ruth Brown, Patrick White: Life and Writings (Stirling: University of Stirling, Centre for
Commonwealth Studies, 1997).
11 Marcel Aurousseau, “The Identity of Voss,” Meanjin 17 (1958): 85–87.
34 WRITING THE NATION ]

away from the expedition in which they had lost all hope of a successful con-
clusion. The explorers occasionally encounter different groups who display a
friendly reaction, such as when Leichhardt and his group exchanged pieces
of dried meat for “ a shower of roasted Nymphea fruit.”12 There was also
the group who expressed admiration for the party’s horses and bullocks and
accompanied the expedition for a while, seeming “very desirous of showing
us the whole country and introducing us to their tribe.”13 The novel contains
no record of such friendly encounters within its limited narrative space.
These could have distracted from the effect of subtle and consistent resis-
tance which the chosen configuration of events in the novel now succeeds in
projecting.

Autonomy of the indigenous world

The structure and tone of the sequenced contacts in the novel construct the
Aborigines as a watchful, hostile group who monitor the progressive weak-
ening of the whites and intervene at a strategic moment when their manoeu-
vre is virtually guaranteed to succeed against its considerably enfeebled
opponent. The novel also avoids any mention of what seems a fairly stan-
dard reaction of the natives (according to explorers’ accounts) to encounters
with the whites, such as manifestations of extreme anxiety and fear and,
usually, immediate flight. The sense that the novel projects of a vital and
resistant Aboriginal society is not the impression sustained in general by
official histories of white settlement. The erasure of black resistance from the
official records is a silence that is only gradually being filled through the work
of scholars like Henry Reynolds. As C.D. Rowley points out,
Henry Reynolds has been a pioneer in Aboriginal oral history in northern
Queensland. Similar efforts are now to be found in many parts of Australia.
These are shedding significant new light on the history of racial contact and
conflict […]. Such work involves a creative interpretation of scattered contact
incidents both recorded and remembered […]. Over nearly two centuries of
oppression the Aboriginal response was to change from guerrilla-type opera-
tions to passive resistance.14

12 Ludwig Leichhardt, Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia, 246–47.

13 Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia, 336–37.
14 C.D. Rowley, foreword to Henry Reynolds, The Other Side of the Frontier (Ringwood,

Victoria: Penguin, 1982): vii–viii.

] Voss 35

Voss shows the creative imagination of the writer piercing the obfuscations
of white history to extract the deeper truth of events. Well before the party
descends into the desert, a striking illustration of the irrelevance to the black
world of the white man’s urgencies is seen in the detail of the black women
on the quay, totally indifferent to all the excitement of the departure of the
expedition:

Two aboriginal women, dressed in the poorest shifts of clothing, but the most
distinguished silence, were seated on the dirt beside the wharf, broiling on a fire
of coals the fish that they had caught.15

The poverty of their dress or the fact that they are seated “on the dirt” in full
public view on the busy wharf does not affect their essential dignity, which
derives from the impression of total self-sufficiency; their concentration is
on their own activity of preparing their food, indifferent to the excitement of
the great event taking place in the white world, and their “most distinguished
silence” (V. 99). They are unaffected by “the humdrum grind of enterprise,
of vehicles and voices in the pearly distance,” so much so that Belle Bonner,
under compulsion to obey her father and leave before she wants to, is driven
to comment: “‘I wish I was free,’ she paused, and pointed, ‘like that black
woman’” (V. 115). It will be noted that silence is an aspect of the Aborigines
in White’s depictions in Voss, but unlike the wordlessness of Conrad’s
blacks, theirs seems aligned with a conscious dignity, with presence and
power, rather than with impotence.
As the group advances into the world of the blacks, a series of encounters
suggests a gradual and deliberate amassing of the black power against the
encroachment of the whites on their territory. The first encounter passes
with no attempt to communicate, mostly because it seems that both Dugald
and Jackie choose to ignore Voss’s request to make an approach:

Other figures were beginning to appear, their shadows first, followed by a

suggestion of skin wedded to the trunk of a tree. […] The strange natives
looked at the white man, through the flies, and the whisks of grey leaves with
which they brushed them away. (V. 191)

The second encounter is much more ominous:

15 Patrick White, Voss (1957; Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin, 1974): 99. Further page

references are in the main text with “V.”

36 WRITING THE NATION ]

During the morning a party of blacks appeared, first as shreds of shy bark
glimpsed between the trunks of the trees, but always drifting, until, finally, they
halted in human form upon the outskirts of the camp. (V. 204)

Angus is all for “driving out” the “filthy race,” who are also cattle thieves,
but the sheer presence of the blacks enforces respect. The suggestions here
are almost of a manifestation of the land itself. There is a majestic remote-
ness about the blacks; they will not be intimidated:

The blacks were watching. Some of the men even grew noble in the stillness
of their concentration and posture of their attenuated limbs. Their faces be-
trayed a kind of longing. (V. 204)

Voss offers one of the men his hand “in friendship,” reinforcing the sense of
a parley between equals:

Each of the white men was transfixed by the strangeness of this ceremony.
It would seem that all human relationships hung in the balance, subject to fresh
evaluation by Voss and the black.
Then the native dropped the hand […].

Voss’s gift of flour is simply scattered and the bag dropped finally in “ig-
noble rags” (V. 206).
Subsequently, the blacks grow markedly more hostile. Signs of the con-
tinuing black presence, as the expedition continues on its way, are manifested
in the loss of an axe, a bridle, and the surviving compass. Soon, their physical
presence is manifested again:

Everybody looked, and saw a group of several blackfellows assembled in the

middle distance. The light and a feather of low-lying mist made them appear to
be standing in a cloud. Thus elevated, their spare, elongated bodies, of burnt
colours, gave to the scene a primitive purity that silenced most of the whites,
and appealed particularly to Voss. (V.340)

During the white men’s altercation about how to deal with them, the blacks
simply wait:

But everyone fell silent, even Judd himself, while the aboriginals, of superior,
almost godlike mien, waited upon their cloud, to pass judgment, as it were.
] Voss 37

Remembering Said’s dictum in the Introduction to Orientalism of the need to

attend to ‘images, themes, motifs that circulate in the text’ as an important
pointer to its ideological underpinnings, one must note how the recurrence
of such adjectives as ‘noble’, ‘superior’, even ‘godlike’ confer dignity and
status on the blacks.16 During the pause that ensues, Voss requests Pal-
freyman to approach the blacks unarmed. The weakness and uncertainty of
the whites contrasts with the blacks’ confidence: “The aboriginals could have
been trees, but the members of the expedition were so contorted by appre-
hension, longing, love or disgust, they had become human again.” (V. 342).
Palfreyman, who is thus compelled by Voss to take on the role of emissary
between the two groups, “was frightened”; he shows the natives the empty
palms of his hands as a gesture of peace but this gesture of defencelessness
results, rather, in provoking the attack:

Then one black man warded off the white mysteries with terrible dignity. He
flung his spear. It struck the white man’s side, and hung down, quivering. […].
A second black, of rather prominent muscles, and emotional behaviour, rushed
forward with a short spear, or knife, it could have been, and thrust it between
the white man’s ribs. It was accomplished so easily.
[…]
Then Judd had discharged his gun, with none too accurate aim, but the
muscular black was fumbling with his guts, tumbling.
[…]
All the blacks had streaked from the scene, […] except the second murderer,
who had stumbled, straddled a rock, toppled, before the violence of uncontrol
flung him away, somewhere, into a gully.
Mr. Palfreyman was already dead when the members of the expedition
arrived at his side and took him up. Nor was there a single survivor who did not
feel that part of him had already died. (V. 342–43)

It is soon after this that Judd comes to his decision to turn back: “If there is
hell before and hell behind and nothing to choose between them […] I will
go home” (V. 346). The striking down of Palfreyman underlines the blacks’
possession of power, agency.
Contrast this with the blacks in Heart of Darkness, pictured as enslaved
totally by their white masters, sick, barely alive. Marlow’s first encounter as
soon as he arrives at the station is with the chain gang:

16 Edward Said, Orientalism, 20.

38 WRITING THE NATION ]

“Six black men advanced in a file, toiling up the path. […] I could see every rib,
the joints of their ribs were like knots in a rope; each had an iron collar on his
neck, and all were connected together with a chain […]. They were called
criminals, and the outraged law […] had come to them, an insoluble mystery
from the sea.” (HD. 16)

A little further on he comes across the workers in the mine:

“The work was going on. The work! And this was the place where some of the
helpers had withdrawn to die.
“They were dying slowly – it was very clear. […] they were nothing earthly
now – nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in
the greenish gloom.” (HD. 17)

In the last encounter in Voss, which marks the final victory of the blacks, the
sheer physical power of the latter as against the weakness of the debilitated
whites is particularly emphasized. White power is at its lowest ebb and the
blacks have grown increasingly confident:

While the white men, with their little trickle of surviving pack animals and
excoriated old horses, stumbled on through the full heat of day, the blacks
padded very firmly. Sometimes the bodies of the latter were solid as wood,
sometimes they would crumble into a haze of black dust, but whether formless
or intact, they expressed the inexorability of confidence. (V. 363)

In this last encounter, the emaciated remnants of the white expedition still
attempt a parley:

When the men had recovered from their surprise, it was seen that the two
columns of natives had come upon their rear, and were standing ranged behind
them in an arc of concentrated silence. (V. 364)

Language, the mode through which the white man has exercised control, is
bereft of its power in the world of the black man. The silence that by now
has come to characterize the blacks is full of menace; when they do speak
through Jackie, the indictment of white actions is clear: “‘These blackfeller
want Jackie. I go. Blackfeller no good along white men. This my people’”
(V. 65). It is at this point, too, that Voss, moved also by the sight of the sores
on the horse he is riding, experiences the first doubts about the possibilities
of success: “Then he did begin to falter and was at last wearing openly his
] Voss 39

own sores which he had kept hidden.” Voss’s attempt to persuade Jackie that
“‘Blackfellow white man friend together’” produces a negative reaction:

“Friend?” asked Jackie.

The word was twangling in the air.
[…]
“Blackfeller dead by white man,” he was prompted to say at last. (V. 365)

Ironically, it seems that even as the white man acquires a sense of the black
man’s value in the course of the journey through the desert the black man
loses his enforced veneration for the invincibility of the white man. This is
apparent in the journals of the explorers as it is in the novel: Jackie is not
convinced by Voss’s attempt to persuade him that he (Voss) can save the
blacks from the Great Snake or that the white man cannot die. The enforced
intimacy has changed the native. He loses his belief in the god-like immunity
of the white man. Voss continues to try to appeal to Jackie, asserting he is
“‘a friend of the blackfellow’,” and again offers his hand in friendship; again
it is rejected, this time with more tragic implications. The white man’s loss of
power is tangible:

The white man took the boy’s hot black right hand in both his, and was
pressing. A wave of sad, warm magic, and yearning for things past, broke over
the blackfellow, but because the withered hands of the white man were physi-
cally feeble, even if warm and spiritually potent, the boy wrenched his hand
away.

There is a contest at this point for the allegiance of Jackie, and the black
world establishes the priority of its claims:

Two men, two elders, and a younger, powerful native now came forward,
and were talking with Jackie, in words and, where these failed, with signs.
[…]
Then Jackie, whose position was obviously intolerable, raised his eyes and
said, “No good, Mr. Voss.
“These blackfeller say you come along us,” […].
Voss bowed his head very low.
[…]
The eyes of the black men were upon him. How the veins of their bodies
stood out, and the nipples.
[…]. He was remounting his horse.
40 WRITING THE NATION ]

In his feebleness […] he felt the toe of his boot slither from the stirrup iron.
[…]. It was an incident which, in the past, may have made him look ridiculous.
But the black men did not laugh. (V. 365–66)

The black world has demonstrated its capacity to hold its own against the
white challenge.

Reversal of white hegemony

The novel also projects an impressive refutation of the customary colonialist
constructions of the racial Other as inevitably and innately inferior to the
European. This aspect of the text works, to some extent, in tandem with the
previous point – but there is a value in discussing it as a separate moment.
This engenders awareness of specific spaces in the narrative where any
implied superiority of white culture is deliberately undermined. Thus, at the
end of this last episode of the black/white encounter, the broken remnants
of the white expedition that had set out with such fanfare from Sydney are
taken prisoner by the blacks – the power and pride of the white man sur-
render to those who know the land.
The colonialist text projects the black as a degenerate and inferior being
deserving only of enslavement by the white. This is the central characteristic
of all colonialist works and a reflection of the relationships installed and
justified by colonial power in all colonial contexts. Noted, in the introduction
to this study, was Marlow’s surprise at the fact that a black could even be
capable of serving on the boat, as unexpected as an encounter with “a dog in
breeches” (HD. 17). As Said has expressed it, one feature of oriental–Euro-
pean relations is that of binary contrasts:

Europe was always in a position of strength, not to say domination […] the
essential relationship, on political, cultural and even religious grounds, was seen
– in the West, which is what concerns us here – to be one between a strong and
a weak partner […].The Oriental is irrational, depraved (fallen), childlike,
“different”; thus the European is rational, virtuous, mature, “normal”.17

At a most critical moment in the action of Heart of Darkness when it seems

possible the white party could be annihilated by the disturbed blacks, the
dying Kurtz is able to keep them in check by the mere gesture of an ema-
ciated arm and his still commanding voice. In Voss, perhaps the most excru-

17 Edward Said, Orientalism, 40.

] Voss 41

ciating moment of the reversal of white authority is enacted in Voss’s

admission to the last of his followers that he has surrendered his authority to
the blacks. This is explicit in his response to the boy Harry’s alarmed ques-
tioning:

Good Lord, sir, what will happen?” asked Harry Robarts, rising to the sur-
face of his eyes.
“They will know, presumably,” replied the German.
“Lord, sir, will you let them?” cried the distracted boy. “Lord, will you not
save us?”
“I am no longer your Lord, Harry,” said Voss. (V. 366)

Voss’s authority has been steadily eroded as the expedition has descended
into the wilderness. Dugald’s decision to return was the first open disavowal
of his authority and Judd’s announcement of his defection completes the
emasculation of his power.
The blacks hold the remnants of the group captive, entombing them
within the twig shelters they build over them. Shortly after, both Harry and
Le Mesurier die. Voss’s admission that he had “no plan [...] but will trust in
God” (V. 379), in reply to Le Mesurier’s question, leaves the latter “blasted
by their leader’s admission.” A little while later, he commits suicide. Harry
Robarts dies during the night and the contemptuous blacks toss out his body
to lie in the gully with Le Mesurier’s:

“There let them breed white maggots together, white maggots,” cried one
blackfellow, who was a poet.
Everybody laughed.
[…]
“White maggots are drying up.
White maggots are drying up ....” (V. 389).

The reversal of white hegemony is completed with the killing of Voss by the
boy Jackie, his erstwhile servant, using the very knife that had been given
him as a gift by Voss:

About the grey hour, several old men and warriors arose. Almost at once their
bodies became purposeful, and they were joined by the guardian of the white
man, who went and roused the boy Jackie.
[…]
42 WRITING THE NATION ]

All moved quickly towards the twig shelter, an ominous humpy in that light.
Jackie went in […].
He could just see that the pale eyes of the white man were looking, whether
at him or through him he did not attempt to discover, but quickly stabbed with
his knife […].
[…]
When Jackie had got the head off, he ran outside, […] and flung the thing at
the feet of the elders, […].
[…]
[…] As for the head-thing, it knocked against a few stones, and lay like any
melon. (V. 394)

The power of the white man is no more; his body is shown to be fragile,
mortal, even less, as the image of the “head-thing” suggests as “it [...] lay like
any melon” (V. 394). The sovereignty of the black world has been violently
re-asserted. There is a poetic justification in Jackie’s being the instrument of
Voss’s death. He has been the servant and guide to the white man and is
compelled, it seems, to make this act of compensation to his people (in the
widest sense; the Aborigines among whom Jackie finds himself here are not
his immediate ‘people’, but “adoptive”).
In fact, long before this climactic moment, from the moment of the
arrival of the blacks at Jildra, at the penultimate point before the descent into
the black world, the dependence of the whites on the blacks is apparent. As
the expedition moves into the wilderness, that dependence increases. After
Dugald leaves, it is Jackie who has constantly to bring in the horses in the
mornings, go after the lost, or stolen, cattle, reconnoitre uncertain territory,
and try to communicate with strange blacks. When he disappears, as he does
from time to time, Voss, particularly, is glad to see him return. He is accep-
ted and rewarded, with no questions asked.
In the Leichhardt narrative, the names of the two black guides – Brown
and Charlie – recur on practically every page of the text. In fact, there is fre-
quent acknowledgment by the leaders of the expeditions of the efforts of the
blacks in both the Leichhardt and the Eyre journals. Interestingly, the em-
bedded attitudes of the white society towards the blacks is very apparent in
the public rewards given to the members of the expedition. In the Leich-
hardt expedition of 1841, of the one thousand pounds remuneration awar-
ded the group, the smallest sum (of twenty-five pounds each) was allocated
to the black men – who would, in addition, not be able to draw it out of the
bank where it was lodged without the permission of its vice-president; the
] Voss 43

next smallest sum, thirty pounds, was awarded to the convict (but he is also
granted a pardon); the lion’s share of six hundred pounds went to Leich-
hardt.18 Wylie, of the Eyre expedition, is more handsomely rewarded, but
then he had remained with Eyre to the end of the expedition and had re-
fused to join the two rebellious blacks. He was granted a pension for life.19
The token ‘remuneration’ given the blacks is part of the dismissive attitude
that the imperialists, who actually depend on their crucial services, generally
display towards them. Marlow in Heart of Darkness wonders at the remunera-
tion paid to the “cannibals” serving on the boat:

“[…] they had given them every week three pieces of brass wire, each about
nine inches long; and the theory was they were to buy their provisions with that
currency in river-side villages. […]. There were either no villages, or the people
were hostile, […]. So, unless they swallowed the wire itself, or made loops of it
to snare fishes with, I don’t see what good their extravagant salary could be to
them.” (HD. 42)

Reynolds cites John Mulvaney’s challenge to traditional historiography in his

Pre-History of Australia (1969), in which he argues that it was the Aborigines
who were the real “discoverers, explorers, and colonists” of the continent.
Reynolds’ own view is that

There is a growing awareness that European settlers did not tame a wilderness
but turned a usurped land to new uses and while exploring its surface and
testing its potential were highly dependent on Aboriginal expertise. Historians
must look again at the Aborigines who accompanied and assisted European
parties in every corner of the continents for it is in their role that we will dis-
cover new significance in that well-worn tale – the exploration of the inland.20

J.F. Burrows comments that the Leichhardt of the journal shows no sign of a
‘romanticizing’ of the blacks such as is shown by Voss, but that the journal
does show that Leichhardt did show unusual tolerance of the blacks’ mis-
behaviour.21 In one episode, he treats the boy Charlie, who has attacked him
violently, with a leniency that is commented on with some surprise by
another member of the expedition, the ornithologist Gilbert. This event is

18 Ludwig Leichhardt, Appendix, Journal of An Overland Expedition, 538–39.

19 Edward Eyre, Journals of Expeditions of Discovery into Central Australia, 111.
20 Henry Reynolds, “The land, the explorers and the Aborigines,” 121.
21 J.F. Burrows, “Voss and the Explorers,” A U M L A 26 (1966): 234–40.
44 WRITING THE NATION ]

also noted by Chisholm.22 Like Voss, Leichhardt is most constantly in the

company of one or the other or both of the blacks, Brown and Charlie. The
Jackie of the novel seems to be a composite of the traits of Brown and
Charlie in the Leichhardt party and perhaps also of aspects of the two boys
who abandon Eyre. (Wylie, of the Eyre narrative, shows a devotion to the
explorer that does not enter into the portrait of either Jackie or Dugald.)
There seems to be no model for Dugald, either from among the guides
described by Leichhardt or those noted by Eyre, though the latter does
mention an old man, to whom he even gives a name, Wylguldie, whom he
persuaded to guide his party for a short spell.23 Eyre customarily refers to the
black guides in his Journal as “the boys.” (Their names are mentioned only in
the early pages of the journal as “Neeramberein” and ‘Cootachah”; perhaps
the unfamiliarity of their native names was the problem.24) The one who
remains faithful to Eyre and is his only companion to the end of the expedi-
tion is “Wylie.”
The dynamics of the relationships with these black guides could be the
subject of a study on its own: the intimacy and the mutual dependence, the
suspicion, annoyance and anger tempered with tolerance and forgiveness or,
in the one instance recorded in Eyre, ending in murder. The full gamut of
the possibilities seem to have been recorded in the journals which establish
the clear impression that in the enforced and prolonged intimacy and mutual
dependence in the context of the expedition, the gulf between black and
white was often bridged. It is remarkable that White does not include the
minor quarrelling and disciplinary actions which the explorers feel obliged to
take in order to reinforce their authority; an inextricable part of life on an
expedition and an area in which the leadership skills of the man in authority,
the leader of the expedition, is constantly tested.
In the journals of Leichhardt, there is, from the very first chapter, men-
tion of “misbehaviour,” of threats, even violence, when Charlie, in particular,
becomes annoyed with the white men. On one occasion, both Charlie and
Brown decamp with the provisions, leaving Leichhardt to fend for himself.
On another occasion, Charlie threatens to fire a ball into Gilbert the ornitho-
logist, and has to be punished. While Leichhardt records the fact that they
managed very well without the blacks, he is always glad to note their return,

22 Alec H. Chisholm, Strange New World, 180.

23 Edward Eyre, Journals of Expeditions into Central Australia, 213–15.
24 Journals of Expeditions into Central Australia, 315.
] Voss 45

especially since there was no possibility of communicating with strange

natives in their absence. Their misbehaviour is always identified as evidence
of the unreliability of the native. (Albert Memmi points out, in his study of
the relations between colonizer and colonized, how the seeming laziness and
acts of insubordination of the ‘natives’ need to be interpreted as evidence of
their rejection of white domination.25) The blacks are disciplined on these
occasions and forced to apologize. Eyre’s journal records similar recalcitrant
behaviour shown even by Wylie (the native from King George Sound), who
later remains faithful to Eyre and refuses to join the blacks who desert the
expedition and murder the overseer when he surprises their raid on the
camp’s supplies.
No such episodes of disciplinary interventions are recorded in Voss. These
would certainly have impinged on the sense of native autonomy. Jackie and
Dugald are never shown to be subjected to punishment even when their
behaviour is openly defiant. Voss shows deference towards the blacks from
the outset, and the source of this deference is quite clearly articulated at his
very first meeting with Dugald and Jackie; he is conscious of their particular
status as primary owners of the land:

[…] two blacks came round the corner of the house. Their bare feet made upon
the earth only a slight, but very particular sound, which, to the German’s ears, at
once established their ownership. (V. 169)

Voss constantly prefers to be with his Aboriginal guides. He is happy in his

illusion that he is embarking at last for the “infinite distances of the country
of which he was taking possession” (V. 190). Michael Cotter has commented
on the ‘imperialism’ of Voss’s attitude as having less to do with “anything so
sordidly human as economic considerations” and as being located, rather, in
a kind of personal hubris.26 Be that as it may, it is quite early suggested that
the two blacks he has recruited into his service will not be as obedient as he
wishes them to be:

25 Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized, tr. Howard Greenfeld (1957; New
York: Orion Press, 1965).
26 Michael Cotter, “Fragmentation, Reconstitution and the Colonial Experience: The

Aborigine in White’s Fiction,” in South Pacific Images, ed. Chris Tiffin (St. Lucia: South
Pacific Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies, 1978): 178.
46 WRITING THE NATION ]

The two blacks jogged along, a little to one side of Voss, as if the subjects
of his new kingdom preferred to keep their distance. They could even have
been rejecting him. Their voices were for each other, and twining with the
dust. (V. 191)

Almost immediately, the illusion of white hegemony is challenged further

when, at a bend in the river, strange blacks appear:

[…] the dusty bodies of men undoubtedly emerged. Dugald and Jackie averted
their faces. […] the old man did exchange words […] but tentative language, of
great formality and coldness. […] The strange natives looked at the white man,
[…]. The explorer would have liked to talk to these individuals, […], and to
have received their homage. But they disappeared. (V. 191)

From the start, Voss’s control over the blacks is shown to be much more
nebulous than he expects. At the first encounter with the strange blacks,
when he wishes speak to them, he is frustrated in his intention by the beha-
viour of the two native guides, who pay no attention; they

[…] had decided apparently not to hear. They were riding faster now. The in-
creased pace robbed the white man’s voice of its roundness: it flickered fleet-
ingly with the motion of his horse. (V. 191).

So his attempts to communicate with the party are defeated. Voss begins to
suspect his hopes may be presumptuous:

[…] the immensity of his presumption did accuse him. The dome of silence was
devoid of all furniture, even of a throne. So he began pulling logs together,
smashing sticks, crumbling scrub, and was building their first fire. […] a rather
disappointing flame. […]. Walking up and down, its maker was overcome by the
distance between aspiration and human nature. (V. 191)

Shortly after, they hear the howling of wild dogs and, on checking with the
blacks, he is told that these sounds were made “by blackfellows who in-
tended mischief” (V. 201). When he tries to get the two blacks to accompany
him to check on the cattle, they “turned their faces from the darkness, and
stared closer into the coals, […]. Darkness is a place of evil, so, wisely, they
avoided it” (V. 201). Voss is obliged to depart alone.
After the next meeting with the blacks, where Voss does “exchange with
the natives a few unhappy, private words” (V. 206), Dugald makes his deci-
sion to return to Jildra and simply states as much to Voss: “‘This no place
] Voss 47

old feller die’” (V. 214). Though he initially dismisses the old man’s request,
Voss cannot ignore it. Voss has himself been weakened by the mule’s kick to
his stomach and for the first time is moved to admit to himself the possible
failure of his expedition:

Voss caught something of the old native’s melancholy, and began to look about
at their blackened pots, at the leather tackle which sweat had hardened, and
those presumptuous notebooks in which he was scribbling the factual details of
their journey. Then the palms of his hands knew a great helplessness. (V. 214)

He permits Dugald to leave with a consignment of letters. The scene shifts

to show the old man’s deliberate destruction of those letters, watched by the
Aborigines who accept him amongst them. It coincides with his shedding
the last signs of his connection with the whites – his swallowtail coat:

The shreds of his coat fell, and he was standing in his wrinkles and his bark-
cloth. If the coat was no longer essential, then how much less was the con-
science he had worn in the days of the whites?
[…]
These papers contained the thoughts of which the whites wished to be rid,
[…].
The old man folded the papers. With the solemnity of one who has inter-
preted a mystery, he tore them into little pieces.
How they fluttered.
[…]. They went walking through the good grass, and the present absorbed them
utterly. (V. 220)

Dugald’s carefree destruction of the white man’s important documents

underlines an impression set in place much earlier by the presence of the in-
different black women at the departure of the expedition from Sydney: the
white man’s values and priorities are irrelevant to the blacks. After Dugald’s
departure, Jackie appears to follow his own impulses even more, with little or
no reference to Voss; a phase which ends with his joining the group of the
hostile blacks who have been shadowing the expedition for a while.
No episodes of disciplinary intervention such as seem frequent enough in
the journals of the explorers are recorded in the novel. These would certainly
have impinged on the sense of native autonomy which White seems con-
cerned to project in Voss. There are several occasions when Jackie simply will
not obey Voss, as when the latter orders him to go across to the caves and
find out whether they would be dry enough:
48 WRITING THE NATION ]

But the black boy […] immediately replied, “Too black. This feller lost in-
side.”
“Dugald would not be frightened,” said Voss.
“Dugald no here,” answered Jackie truthfully.
Voss cursed all black swine, but at once persuaded himself it was the rain
that had made him lose his temper, for he clung to a belief that these subjects of
his kingdom would continue to share his sufferings long after the white men
had fallen away. (V. 273)

Jackie appears to come and go as the will takes him; Voss has little real
control. When the cattle get lost, Voss, Judd, Angus and Jackie scour the
country for two days:

Then they lost Jackie.

Ralph Angus cursed.
“These blacks are all alike,” he complained, […].
“I have great confidence in this boy,” Voss announced, and would continue
to hope until the end, […]. (V. 285)

Voss’s trust seems vindicated when Jackie returns with almost all the lost
cattle, and Voss is glad “out of all proportion to the incident” (V. 286). No
questions are asked and Jackie is rewarded with a ration of damper. Shortly
after, the party breaks up, and Judd leaves with Turner and Angus, who opt
to accompany him. On that occasion, Voss is moved to a feeling of “inordi-
nate affection” for the black boy who remains with him; but again “in the
morning Jackie could not be found.” Voss makes excuses for his absence,
and then simply states: “He will come. Eventually” (V. 362). When Jackie
does reappear, he has joined the party of the hostile natives and acts as their
intermediary.
This reversal of roles, which places the black as the dominant partner in
the relationship, appears in a more benign light when the Aborigine takes on
the role of instructing the white in the art of survival in a world that is alien
to him but where the black is at home. It is well-known in the accounts of
early contact that often the indigenous peoples themselves assisted the alien
visitors in the arts of survival in the new land. There are numerous instances
of this in the journals of the explorers:

The value of the black advisers was recognised within a few years of the first
settlement. While leading one of the earliest expeditions inland from Sydney,
Tench found that his guides were far more competent than Europeans in the
] Voss 49

bush; the hindrances that “plagued” and “entangled” the whites “seemed not to
be heeded by them” and they “wound through them with ease”. […]. In
Western Australia, the same lesson was learnt during the first decade of settle-
ment, the editor of the Perth Gazette noted in 1839 that it was “useless for any
party of Europeans to go out without the assistance of a native as a guide.”
Aboriginal guides came to be employed alike by large official expeditions,
small private parties seeking land, by drovers, teamsters, prospectors and police-
men. It was common to utilise both the generalised bush skills of Aborigines
from settled districts as well as detailed regional information picked up from
local groups along the way. The partly acculturated ‘black-boy’ was an invaluable
aid to Europeans in the bush.27

Reynolds mentions a number of explorers who record their indebtedness to

their “black boys”: Wommai of Leichhardt’s first expedition; Mitchell’s
Piper, who could “read traces on the earth, climb trees, or dive into the
water, better than the ablest of us […] the most accomplished man in the
camp”; H.S. Russell’s Jemmy; W.O. Hodgkinson’s Larry; Warburton’s
Charlie, to whom “may be attributed the salvation of the party.” He cites the
disastrous experience of Burke and Wills (who deliberately discouraged any
association with the Aboriginal guides) as the final proof of the value of the
black people’s assistance:

The fate of Burke and Wills is germane […]. [They] had failed to appreciate the
crucial role of the Aborigine. On the outward journey to Carpentaria, blacks were
shunned […]. Wills noted in his journal “[…] they appear to be mean-spirited
and contemptible in every respect.” Six months later, with disaster looming, his
tone had changed. A chastened and wiser Wills wrote: “Started for the black’s
camp intending to test the practicability of living with them and to see what I could
learn from their ways and manners.” Before death Burke and Wills were sleeping in
gunyahs, harvesting nardoo and grinding it with stone tools scavenged from a
black’s camp. They had learnt albeit too late, one of the basic lessons of Austra-
lian exploration.28

27 Henry Reynolds, “The Land, the Explorers and the Aborigines,” 122.
28 Reynolds, “The Land, the Explorers and the Aborigines,” 123 (emphases mine).
Both journals, Leichhardt’s and Eyre’s, record numerous instances of insubordination.
While the latter’s are rarer, it also records the far more serious incident of the actual
murder of the overseer by the black “boys,” though Wylie remains faithful to the end of
the expedition.
50 WRITING THE NATION ]

In the novel, while Voss is riding with his black companions, Jackie kills a
short-tailed lizard:

“Is it really good to eat?” asked the German.

Dugald restricted that possibility by waving the same long, black stick of a
finger.
“Blackfeller,” he laughed.
And Jackie joined in. (V. 190)

This is a noticeable departure from the journals, where there are continual
examples of the whites learning to survive on food like lizards, rats, snakes,
and possums, creatures that they would certainly not have consumed in the
‘civilized’ world. Perhaps in the context of the novel it was a necessary mode
of underlining the fact that when, at the climactic moment, Voss has the
witchetty grub placed on his tongue like the sacramental wafer in the Chris-
tian ritual of the Eucharist, he has become one with the indigene.
Food is, after all, a vital cultural signifier and sharing of food is a universal
symbol of amity, while disgust or reviling of the food habits of another cul-
tural group goes hand in hand with ingrained repulsion at the people them-
selves. The alterity of the blacks on the boat in the eyes of Marlow and his
fellow-travellers in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is underlined by the detail of
their cannibalism. This has been suspended, it would seem, as long as they
are under white surveillance. In the meantime, they subsist on the carcass of
rotting hippo flesh, which provokes the disgust of the whites, who, unable to
stand the stench of it any longer, “‘had thrown a considerable quantity of it
overboard’”:

“It looked like a high-handed proceeding; but it really was a case of legitimate
self-defence. You can’t breathe dead hippo waking, sleeping, and eating, […].
For the rest, the only thing to eat – though it didn’t look eatable in the least –
[…] was a few lumps of some stuff like half-cooked dough, of a dirty lavender
colour, they kept wrapped in leaves, and now and then swallowed a piece of,
[…].” (HD. 41–42).

Later on in Voss, the boy Jackie, who appears to have gradually acquired
more of the whites’ language, takes on the task of inducting the group into
black culture by interpreting the meaning of the burial platforms. So effective
are his words and the accompanying gestures that Palfreyman is moved to
visualize “the soul leaving the body,” and Harry, the simple boy, remembers
the image of a bird in flight at the moment of Palfreyman’s death. The en-
] Voss 51

counter with the cave paintings is another episode where deficiency of lan-
guage does not prevent the black from imparting to his white audience an
understanding of his culture. He explains the significance of the snake to
Voss:

“Snake,” Jackie explained, “Father, my father, all blackfeller.”

[…]
“Kangaroo,” said the boy. “Old man,” he smiled, touching certain parts.
[…] “What are they?”
These appeared to be an assembly of tortuous skeletons, or bundles of
bones and blowing feathers […].
“Men gone away all dead,” the boy explained. “All over.” He waved his arm.
“By rock. By tree. No more men,” […].”
“Now I understand,” said Voss gravely.
He did. To his fingertips. He felt immensely happy. (V. 275)

As the Berndts have recorded,

Over much of Aboriginal Australia, there is a fairly consistent belief in the Rain-
bow Snake, known by various names, but always associated with rain or water.
In some areas it is male, in others female and there is considerable variation in
which it is linked with sacred ritual […].29

What the White text is doing is establishing a sense of the pride of the Abori-
gines in the richness of their own culture, which only recent research such as
the work of Henry Reynolds is bringing to light:

While they remained on traditional land, Aborigines retained an unmatched

knowledge of their environment related expertise and a resulting self-confidence
which Europeans found hard to understand. The missionary William Schmidt
was asked by the 1845 Select Committee on the Condition of the Aborigines if
the Blacks ‘were conscious of their inferiority to the whites. ’He answered that
judging from their own expressions they considered themselves superior to us’.
The interrogation continued:
Do you mean that they consider themselves superior to the whole of the white race, or to
those they saw in the condition of convicts?
On the whole: they preferred their mode of living to ours; when they had
accompanied us on some of our journeys, they have expressed the opinion that

29 See Ronald & Catherine Berndt, “Religious Belief and Practice: Totemism and Myth-

ology,” in Berndt, The World of the First Australians, 227–58.

52 WRITING THE NATION ]

they were our masters in the bush, and our servants on the stations; they pitied
us that we troubled ourselves with so many things.30

Towards the end of the novel, we are again made aware of the spirituality of
the Aboriginal world during the episode of the appearance of the comet,
which the Aborigines interpret as a manifestation of the deity. Again it is
Jackie who intimates the cultural significance to Voss:

Then Jackie was standing in the silence.

“Why are you afraid?” Voss asked.
The blackfellow was quite cold.
But, with his dark body and few words, he began to enact the story of the
Great Snake, the grandfather of all men, that had come down from the north in
anger.
“And what are we to expect?” asked Voss humorously. “This angry snake
will do what?”
“Snake eat, eat,” cried the black boy, snapping at the darkness with his white
teeth.
[…]
“You want for white man save blackfellow from this snake?”
[…]
“Snake too much magic, no good of Mr. Voss,” Jackie replied.
[…]
The night was quiet as the blacks lay against their fires, under the coils of the
golden snake. They would look up sometimes, but preferred that the old men
should translate this experience into terms they could understand. (V. 379)

All through the time of the “Snake’s” appearance, the whites were ignored as
being of comparative unimportance. “All men were, in fact, as witchetty
grubs in the fingers of children” (V. 380).
At least one researcher, Ann Ling, has commented that White’s awareness
of Aboriginal belief systems could not have come to him from his acknowl-
edged source materials. The Eyre journals (particularly vol. 2) could have
provided a wealth of insights into several aspects of their lives and culture,
but he states (and Ling quotes this specific passage at greater length):

The natives of New Holland, as far as yet can be ascertained, have no reli-
gious beliefs or ceremonies. A Deity or great First Cause can hardly be said to
be acknowledged, and certainly is not worshipped by this people, who ascribe

30 Henry Reynolds, “The Land, the Explorers and the Aborigines,” 127.
] Voss 53

creation to very inefficient causes […] it is impossible at present to say with

any certainty what they really believe, or whether they have any independent
belief at all.31

Yet (as Ling notes) in the very next paragraph, Eyre “follows this with an
Aboriginal account of the Creation!” Her view is that

White saw past the point at which Eyre’s capacity for insight gave out. It is
probable that he had the advantage of being informed by the advances in
knowledge of tribal religious systems which this century has seen; in any case
White’s own kind of attentiveness to aboriginal spirituality has a value which is
quite independent of any claim to original intellectual deduction.32

Transformation
It is impossible to read the journals of the explorers and not be struck by the
realization that in the enforced intimacy within which black and white live in
the context of their journeys together, the racial divide becomes increasingly
attenuated. In the isolation of the desert, both black and white are equally
subjected to the mercy of the elements, the vagaries of events, the tribula-
tions and suffering imposed by lack of water, food, and other physical priva-
tions, so that the sense of their mutual dependence is inescapable. In the
sharing of the meagre food particularly, the basic bond of a common
humanity is underlined in the explorer texts. When Leichhardt and Brown
become lost on one occasion, the journal records how they shared the only
food they could obtain: “an eatable root” found in a deserted Aboriginal
camp, pigeons, or even “a sleeping lizard with a blunt tail and knobby scales,
[which] fell into our hands and was of course roasted and greedily eaten.”33
Food which the white man would not have ever contemplated feeding on in
his normal environment becomes essential to his survival in the desert.
There are not too many scenes in Voss in which the sense of sharing of
food emphasizes a shared humanity, but the motif is present in the Christ-
mas feast which Judd (the figure closest to occupying the space of a ‘white
indigene’) prepares in the desert. Robarts’ disgust at the maggot-ridden

31 Edward John Eyre, Journal of Expeditions into Central Australia, 355.

32 Ann Rebecca Ling, “Voss and A Fringe of Leaves: Community and Place in the Histo-
rical Novels of Patrick White” (M.A. thesis, University of Queensland, 1983): 35.
33 Ludwig Leichhardt, Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia, 115–17.
54 WRITING THE NATION ]

carcass of the sheep is easily dismissed by Judd, who simply scrapes the car-
cass free of them and proceeds to cook the meat for the repast, which is en-
joyed by all of the group. Where, earlier, Voss had been warned that the
lizard was food only for the black, when he is near death a witchetty grub
placed on his tongue by his black guardian can be regarded as a sacramental
token of the apotheosis of his progress towards the status of settler-indigene.
Voss’s candidacy for indigenization, for ‘becoming Australian’, has, how-
ever, been programmed from the very beginning of events. There is consi-
derable subtlety in the textual strategies within the narrative, which suggest a
gradual transformation of the foreign German explorer into Australian in-
digene. Terry Goldie, speaking of the process of indigenization of the Cana-
dian subject, prefers the term “acquiring Indian” to “going Indian.”34 Per-
haps “becoming” is even more preferable, since “acquiring” upholds the
expropriative signification imbricated in the imperial project. It also suggests
something that is extraneous to the subject, whereas ‘becoming’ suggests a
process of inner psychic change, a transformation of the colonialist mind-set;
a reversal of imperial appropriation and an aspiration, rather, towards
indigene valorization. The distinction from the term “going native” needs to
be emphatically made here. It underlines the difference in the experience of
the protagonist in White’s novels from that of Kurtz in Conrad’s novella.
The term ‘going native’ has pejorative implications reflective of the Euro-
pean fear (at the core of Heart of Darkness) that contact with the savage world
will set off regressive tendencies within the European. Another term for this
is ‘going fantee’. Ian Watt has discussed the derogatory implications of these
terms at some length:

[…] the final phase of Kurtz’s life could be placed in a much commoner per-
spective – that of white men ‘going native’. This myth had arisen as soon as the
white man had started going out to make his fortune in the far places of the
earth. In Africa, the myth had taken a particular form – that of ‘going fantee’,
The phrase, based on the name of a Gold Coast tribe, came into English in
1886, meaning “to join the natives of a district and to conform to their habits”
(O E D ); and there was a French equivalent, that of being stricken by la Soudaneté.
The process was already a commonplace in popular stories, and it provided a
perspective in which at least two initiated readers saw the character of Kurtz.
Hugh Clifford, a man of very wide colonial experience in Asia and Africa, saw
Kurtz as the “why” of the process he called “denationalization,” which had

34 Terry Goldie, Fear and Temptation, 217.

] Voss 55

already “been treated often enough in fiction.” This was also the diagnosis of
the only person who both knew the Congo well and put on record his reaction
to Heart of Darkness.
Captain Otto Lutken, a Danish sea captain who had commanded ships on
the upper Congo for years, […] greatly admired Conrad, and particularly the
characterisation of Kurtz. It is in the picture Conrad draws of Kurtz, the
“tropenkollered” [“maddened by the tropics”] white man, that his authorship
rises supreme. “The man is lifelike and convincing – heavens, how I know him!
I have met one or two Kurtz’s in my time in Africa, and I can see him now.”35

Watt sees the Conrad text as

unique in being the first to connect the process of ‘going fantee’ with an even
more general consequence of the colonial situation: the fact that the individual
colonist’s power, combined with the lack of any effective control, was an open
invitation to every kind of cruelty and abuse.

He goes on to discuss at least nine possible real-life models for Conrad’s

characterization of Kurtz, seeing this phenomenon as indicative of the moral
climate in which the work was composed. The experience of the protagonist
in Voss offers a sustained contrast to that of Conrad’s Kurtz. It does not
construct a black world in which the white colonist’s power has run amok,
and therefore offers an “open invitation to every kind of cruelty and abuse,”
because it was simply part of a campaign by “sordid buccaneers […]. To tear
treasure out of the bowels of the land […] with no more moral purpose
behind it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe” (HD. 9). The process
of ‘indigenization’ is not to be confused with this process of degeneracy, a
falling away from the humane values of European civilization, but, rather, is
an expansion of consciousness to embrace the wider possibilities of human
community.
Insofar as Voss is a “foreign bloke,” a German whose manners seem ec-
centric and decidedly peculiar to colonial Sydney society, he may be deemed
from the start to be appreciably closer to the native Other than to the genteel
society of colonial Sydney. His comments regarding their attitudes to the
land suggest this from the start. Besides this, he is constantly represented as
thinking of the Aborigines as ‘his people’ and ‘his subjects’. It is his feeling
for the land, which he describes to Laura from the very first moment of his

35 Ian Watt, “Heart of Darkness,” in Watt, Conrad in the Nineteenth Century (London:

Chatto & Windus, 1980): 144–45.

56 WRITING THE NATION ]

arrival ‘on stage’, that marks a difference in the gaze he turns upon the land
vis-à-vis that of the traditional colonizer. As Laura remarks of him, he is “not
all money talk.” The re-invention of the colonizer as indigene-elect begins
with the relationship to the land. The gaze of the colonizer on the colonized
place is radically different from that of the indigene, who sees the colonized
place as ‘home’. The foreign place remains alien, an enigma to the colonizer–
exploiter, who regards it with a mixture of greed and abhorrence. Observing
the landscape from a distanced position on the deck of the steamboat, Mar-
low’s impressions are of a mirage, which seemed “to glisten and drip with
steam,” and “every day the coast looked the same as though we had not
moved.” The alien observer cannot decipher the landscape nor decode its
sounds:

“The living trees, […] every living bush of the undergrowth, might have been
changed into a stone […]. Not the faintest sound of any kind could be heard.
You looked on amazed, and began to suspect yourself of being deaf – then the
night came suddenly, and struck you blind as well.” (HD. 40).

The “blindness” and “deafness” enforce a sense of the alienation of the ob-
server from the landscape before his gaze. Sounds, when they become
audible, are “savage discords,” “shrieking,” or “savage clamour,” reiforcing
the total otherness of the savage world to the European observer.
Even before his descent into the wilderness, Voss affirms his sense of
being drawn to the landscape. It is in his attitude to the land, the Australian
landscape, that the slippage occurs between Voss the “foreign bloke,” the
explorer hired as agent by Bonner the merchant as a tool for further ex-
ploitation of the land and Voss the putative Australian. From his very first
appearance, Voss reprimands the locals for their rejection of the native land-
scape: “A pity that you huddle […] your landscape is of great subtlety” (V.
11). He has, himself, walked four kilometres in the heat to the Bonner home.
His words suggest that the psychic change from foreigner to indigene is
already underway: “I am at home. It is like the poorer parts of Germany.
Sandy. It could be Mark Brandenburg” (V. 11). Fear of the strange place,
which is not home, is the characteristic response of the exile. Voss wonders
at the attitudes of the colonials he encounters: “‘I do hardly meet a man
here,’ he said, ‘who does not suspect he will be unmade by this country, in-
stead of knowing he can make it what he wishes’” (V. 42). In declaring the
country to be Voss’s “by right of vision” (V. 26), Laura declares also that
“He is not afraid” (V. 28). Even in her own case, she admits, “‘I have been
] Voss 57

afraid […] and it will be some time, I expect, before I am able to grasp any-
thing so foreign and incomprehensible. It is not my country though I have
lived in it’” (V. 29).
She has also identified the crucial difference between Voss and the typical
colonialist: “He does not intend to make a fortune out of this country like
other men. He is not all money talk” (V. 28). Mr Bonner, on the other hand,
articulates the colonizer’s ethos: “This is the country of the future. Who will
not snap at an opportunity when he sees one? And get rich” (V. 28). He
takes pride in the obvious signs of progress, citing the typical Western
markers of that progress:

“We have only to consider the progress we have made. Look at our homes and
public edifices. Look at the devotion of our administrators, and the solid
achievements of those men who are settling the land.” (V. 29)

The imperial project is inseparable from profit-making. As Marlow acknowl-

edges,

“The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those
who have a different complexions or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not
a pretty thing when you look into it too much.” (HD. 7)

The colonizer–invader reads the land differently from the indigene-elect:

stooping over the map together with Voss,

Mr. Bonner read the words, but Voss saw the rivers. He followed them in their
fretful course. He flowed in cold glass, or dried up in little yellow potholes,
festering with green scum. (V. 23)

Mr. Pringle also displays the colonizer ethos in his scepticism about the com-
mercial value of the expedition: “‘this country will prove most hostile to
anything in the nature of planned development’” (V. 61). His view is that all
Voss will find will be “‘something resembling the bottom of the sea’,” but
Voss, the indigene-elect in the landscape of the elective home, declares: “‘I
am fascinated by the prospect before me’.” The same gap between the per-
ception of the prosperous grazier Sanderson and the the white visionary
initiate is apparent when the former is explaining the lie of the land to Voss:
“‘The country round here is divided up, for the greater part, into small hold-
ings. That is to say, until we reach the boundaries of Rhine Towers’” (V.
124). Voss is more intoxicated by the glories of the natural scene before him:
58 WRITING THE NATION ]

But it was the valley itself which drew Voss. Its mineral splendours were in-
creased in that light. As bronze retreated, veins of silver loomed in the gullies,
knobs of amethyst and sapphire glowed on the hills […].
“Achhh!” cried Voss, upon seeing. (V. 28)

Apart from his attitude to the land, the settler–indigene’s perception of, and
attitude towards, the indigene is also a measure of potential belonging.
Where the colonial mind-set was such that the black was regarded as barely
human, here there is a sense of a bonding with the indigene. The Eyre jour-
nal itself contains material that could possibly have influenced the construc-
tion of the indigenous figure in Voss in a mode that distinctly interrogates the
derogatory projections of colonialist narrative. White himself mentions read-
ing Eyre’s journal at the height of the Second World War as marking the
beginning of his work on Voss.36 The journal contains reflections on the
character of the Aborigines and the nature of black/white relations as well
as an extensive section entitled “Manners and Customs of the Aborigines of
Australia,” making up over three-fourths of the second volume of the jour-
nals and showing that Eyre had acquired expertise in all these fields.37
He includes a paragraph in his preface which deserves quoting at length
for its freedom from colonialist bias – something almost unthinkable in that
age:

It is most lamentable to think that the progress and prosperity of one race
should conduce to the downfall and decay of another; it is still more so to
observe the apathy and the indifference with which this result is contemplated
by mankind in general, and which either leads to no investigation being made as
to the cause of this desolating influence, or if it is, terminates […] in the inquiry,
like an inquest of the one race upon the corpse of the other, ending for the
most part with the verdict of ‘died by the visitation of God.38

His analysis of the problems involved in dealing with the Aborigine con-
stantly pinpoints the failure of the whites to accept their responsibilities to-
wards a people on whom they have inflicted considerable trauma. It has a
curiously contemporary note in its pleading for retraction of negative atti-

36 Patrick White, “The Prodigal Son” (1958), in Patrick White Speaks, ed. Christine Flynn
& Paul Brennan (Sydney: Primavera Press, 1989): 15.
37 Edward John Eyre, Journals of Expeditions of Discovery into Central Australia and Overland:

From Adelaide to King George’s Sound, vol. 2: 147–508.

38 Eyre, Journals of Expeditions of Discovery, vol. 1: x.
] Voss 59

tudes. There is an electrifyingly contemporary note in the outspoken recogni-

tion of the act of aggression involved in the European occupation of the
blacks’ territory and the equally frank recognition of the right of the Abori-
gine to be regarded as a human being with equal rights to the European – a
remarkable subversion of colonialist thought in the very heyday of colonial-
ism. Eyre arraigns the British system of justice, which “provides not for the
safety, privileges, and protection of the Aborigines, and owners of the soil,
but which merely lays down rules for the direction of the privileged robber in
the distribution of the booty of any newly-discovered country” (emphasis
mine).
In Heart of Darkness, the demonization of the racial Other is characteristic
of the colonialist mind-set. By contrast, in Voss the protagonist is shown to
accord the indigene esteem, even favour, over his white followers. From the
first moment of his encounter with them, Voss treats the indigenous people
with respect, even deference. What he values, as is clear when he first en-
counters Dugald and Jackie, is the air of ‘ownership’ of the land that they
exude in their very bearing. He expects the blacks to show more courage and
loyalty to him than any of the whites in his company.
As Voss traverses the wilderness, he undergoes both a mental and a physi-
cal transformation. As he moves through the desert, the visible darkening of
his skin makes him seem more and more aligned to the landscape and the
indigenous people:

Blackened and yellowed by the sun, dried in the wind, he now resembled some
root, of dark and esoteric purpose. […] he was drawn closer to the landscape
[…]. (V. 168)

A little later on, after the remnants of the party have been captured, it is
noted that

The going was quite tolerable upon this pale, dusty track. Some of the natives
went ahead, but most walked along behind. Now there was little distinction
between skins, between men and horses even. (V.366)

In their representation as seemingly materializing out of the trunks of trees

or vanishing into the earth, the link between the land and the indigenous
figures is consistently foregrounded. For example, in the first appearance of
the Aborigines in the desert, they are represented as “shadows first, followed
by a suggestion of skin wedded to the trunk of a tree” (V. 191); or, again,
60 WRITING THE NATION ]

they are “shreds of shy bark glimpsed between the trunks of the trees, but
always drifting, until, finally, they halted in human form upon the outskirts of
the camp” (V. 204). The equation of man–plant–animal–place should not be
regarded as derogatory of the status of Aboriginal man. All of these are
finally interchangeable with the ancestral beings who are believed to have
brought the land itself and its features into existence as they wandered
through it in the Dreamtime. Most anthropological investigations, while
allowing for the great variety that exists among the different moieties, concur
that generally, for Aborigines, “the human, plant, animal and spiritual inhabi-
tants of their cosmos are perceived as co-existing as one within the all-
embracing canopy provided by the founding of the Dreamtime.”39 Ronald
and Catherine Berndt record that “In the Western Desert, people say there
are still wandering ‘djugurba’ beings like those among the Dieri, partly
human, partly animal, reptile, bird and so on, but in the myths they are
thought of as mainly human.”40
Voss also acquires an induction into the indigenous culture. It is Voss
who discovers the burial platforms of the Aborigines and receives, along
with Judd and Harry, information about their use. It is Voss who enters the
caves first with Jackie, and is the first recipient of his explanations of the
meanings of the drawings and it is his reaction to the explanation that is
recorded:

So that the walls of the caves were twangling with the whispers of the
tangled kites. The souls of men were only waiting to come out.
“Now I understand,” said Voss gravely.
He did to his fingertips. He felt immensely happy. (V. 275)

Voss deliberately chooses to ride with the blacks when the party first moves
into the desert. After Dugald leaves, Voss’s most constant companion is the
boy Jackie:

He was happiest with his loyal subjects.

[…].
The white man was singing:

39 Robert Tonkinson, The Mardudjara Aborigines: Living the Dream in Australia’s Desert
(New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1978): 115.
40 Ronald M. Berndt & Catherine H. Berndt, “Religious Mythology,” in Berndt, The

World of the First Australians, 185–246.

] Voss 61

“Eine blosse Seele ritt hinaus

Dem Blau’ ent-ge gen...”
[…]. But they were happy together. (V. 191)

In this singing, he exemplifies the orality which Goldie identifies as a “com-

modity” usually identified with the indigene.41
At the moment of his death the suggestions are that as his blood flows
into the land, Voss merges with the Australian earth: “His dreams fled into
the air, his blood ran out upon the dry earth, which drank it up immediately”
(V. 394). The crazed convict Judd’s comment has an additional resonance in
this connection:
“Voss left his mark on the country […]. The blacks talk about him to this
day. He is still there – that is the honest opinion of many of them –he is there in
the country, and always will be.” (V. 443)
“How?” repeated Miss Trevelyan […].
“Well, you see, if you live and suffer long enough in a place, you do not leave
it altogether. Your spirit is still there.” (V. 443)

The construction of the indigene in Voss and its exploration of the possi-
bilities of the white person moving into the space suggestive of a sharing in
indigeneity offers a radical subversion of the colonialist project and its mani-
chaean division of humanity into black and white, two irreversibly opposed
categories in which all virtue, civilization, and goodness are arrogated to the
European, and the non-European Other relegated to the state of the sub-
human.

Belonging in the adoptive land

A remarkably sustained debate is discernible within the novel relating to the
theme of the land and belonging within it. What this demonstrates is that the
process of indigenization is not confined only to Voss; lesser characters also
participate in varying degrees in the process. The theme is orchestrated by
Voss in his very first appearance. He broaches the topic of belonging in the
land in his conversation with Laura, articulating his own sense of bonding
with it and moving her to assess her own attitudes to it. She realizes that
“She was also afraid of the country which, for lack of any other, she sup-
posed was hers” (V. 11). The debate he has ignited continues in the Bonner

41 Terry Goldie, Fear and Temptation, 16.

62 WRITING THE NATION ]

household even after Voss leaves. Laura takes it upon herself to try and ana-
lyse something of what she sees as the difference in Voss’s attitude to the
country: “‘He does not intend to make a fortune out of this country, like
other men. He is not all money talk’” (V. 28).
The phrase “the country” echoes throughout the ensuing conversations,
with the varied attitudes of the group being registered. Mrs Bonner, for
example, fears what “this country” would do to her complexion; Belle admits
she would not like to ride very far into it; she is afraid of the prospect of
meeting “‘a lot of blacks, and deserts, and rocks, and skeletons’.” Despite
Bonner’s articulation of pride in “‘the progress we have made […] our
homes and public edifices’,” Laura sums up the final impression: “‘Everyone
is still afraid, or most of us, of this country, and will not say it. We are not yet
possessed of understanding’.” She confesses her own inadequacy when Tom
Radclyffe teases her with being unafraid like “‘the obsessed Herr Voss’”:
“‘I have been afraid,’ said Laura Trevelyan, ‘and it will be some time, I
expect, before I am able to grasp anything so foreign and incomprehensible.
It is not my country, although I have lived in it’” (V. 29).
Voss has also taken up the theme with members of the expedition. Le
Mesurier has questioned Voss on board ship about his motive for “‘coming
to this damned country’” (V. 33). Voss’s answer is given “without hesita-
tion”:

“I will cross the continent from one end to the other. I have every intention to
know it with my heart. Why I am pursued by this necessity, it is no more
possible for me to tell than it is for you, who have made my acquaintance only
before yesterday.” (V. 33)

Yet he does elaborate further on the peculiar attraction the country has for
him when he later tries to persuade Le Mesurier to join him on the expedi-
tion:

“Every man has a genius, though it is not always discoverable. Least of all when
choked by the trivialities of daily existence. But in this disturbing country, […] it
is possible more easily to discard the inessential and to attempt the infinite. You
will be burnt up most likely […] but you will realize that genius of which you
sometimes suspect you are possessed, and of which you will not tell me you are
afraid.” (V. 35)

Gathering his group together in Sydney, he declares, “‘I do meet scarcely a

man here […] who does not suspect he will be unmade by his country. In-
] Voss 63

stead of knowing he will make it into what he wishes’” (V. 40). The music
teacher Topp declares, “‘It is no country of mine […] except by the unfor-
tunate accident of my being here’.” To him, it is a land of white barbarity: “‘I
came here through idealism […] and a mistaken belief that I could bring
nicety to barbarian minds. Here, even the gentry, or what passes for it, has
eaten itself into a stupor of mutton’” (V. 40). For Harry Robarts, though, a
full belly is enough source for satisfaction: “‘I see nothing wrong with this
country […] nor with havin’ your belly full. Mine has been full since the day
I landed, and I am glad’” (V. 40). Voss’s comment winds up the debate for
the time being: “‘I will venture to call it my country, although I am a
foreigner, […]. And although so little of my country is known to me as yet’”
(V.41). He retains the thought in his mind that “if he were to leave [his]
name on the land, irrevocably, his material body swallowed by what it had
named, it would be rather on some desert place […]” (V.41). It is patently a
premonition of his own end.
At the conclusion of the narrative, the theme is again taken up by some of
the individuals who had also debated it at the start. They seem to have all
moved latterly to attitudes of greater understanding. Somewhere in the
depths of the narrative, at the burial of Rose Portion, at which she has
undergone a kind of mystical experience and through her vicarious partici-
pation in the sufferings of Rose, Laura has gained experiences which have
brought her understanding of “this great country, which we have been pre-
sumptuous enough to call ours” (V. 239). At the final ball set in the Bonner
house that Belle has chosen as the setting for the event, Laura holds court
before a select group and the theme of ‘the country’ is taken up again. She
declares:

“ ‘ I am uncomfortably aware of the very little I have seen […] of our great
country […] but the little I have seen is less, I like to feel, than what I know.
Knowledge was never a matter of geography. […] true knowledge only comes
of death by torture in the country of the mind’.” (V. 446)

She refers here to the knowledge, vicariously acquired, through her psychic
participation in the sufferings of Voss. Topp, the music master, has also
changed: “Out of his hatred for the sour colonial soil […] had developed a
perverse love.” He is still troubled by the prospect that “‘we [might] come to
grief on our mediocrity as a people’,” but the artist Willie Pringle outlines
more optimistic possibilities for the Australia of the future, where the medio-
crity of some will combine with the genius of others, so that the “‘grey of
64 WRITING THE NATION ]

mediocrity’” will not be “‘a final and irrevocable state; rather is it a creative
source of endless variety and subtlety’” (V. 447).
The question of belonging is finally answered definitively by the crazed
ex-convict Judd, in response to Laura’s questioning of his statement that
Voss is “‘still there […] in the country’”: “‘Well, you see, if you live and
suffer long enough in a place, you do not leave it altogether. Your spirit is
still there’” (V. 443). His statement is validated when Laura offers this,
shortly after, as a response to the visitor Ludlow in what is virtually the final
segment of this extended narrative of belonging. Questioned by him about
the fate of Voss, she shows she has accepted Judd’s answer in the manner in
which she answers Ludlow, echoing the phrasing of Judd’s earlier response
to her: “‘Voss did not die […]. He is still there, it is said, in the country, and
always will be’” (V. 448). Laura’s words “‘I believe I have begun to under-
stand this great country’” (V. 239) sum up her own progress.
Laura’s role is a prefiguring of Ellen’s in White’s later novel A Fringe of
Leaves; their psychic pilgrimages have their parallels and their contrasts.
Where Ellen in the later novel will journey physically into the land of the
blacks, Laura’s journey takes the form of a psychic sharing in Voss’s desert
expedition. In thus electing to thrust a woman from the privileged class into
the colonial wilderness, White’s practice offers another radical contrast to
Heart of Darkness. In the latter, the white woman must not be sullied by the
truth of the events that have taken place at the heart of the black world.
Kurtz’s Intended is allowed to preserve her illusion about the exalted nature
of her betrothed. She has lived far removed from the theatre of events, and
will continue to do so, with all her illusions intact. When the thought of the
woman who is Kurtz’s betrothed crosses his mind, Marlow reflects: “‘Oh,
she is out of it – completely. They – the women I mean – are out of it – […].
We must help them to stay in that beautiful world of their own, lest ours gets
worse’” (HD. 49). Earlier, when he had met with his aunt, who had talked
about “weaning those ignorant millions from their horrid ways,” he does
venture “to hint that the Company was run for profit.” He reflects:

“It’s queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their
own, […]. It is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to set it up it would go
to pieces before the first sunset.” (HD. 12)

Ian Watt remarks that obviously such comments on women could not refer
to the women in the office of the trading company or even to Kurtz’s
] Voss 65

African lover. He seems to elevate women of the “well-to-do and leisured

class” to a kind of pedestal, out of touch with the realities of existence:

It therefore follows that merely by allotting women a leisure role, society has in
effect excluded them from discovering reality: so it is by no choice or fault of
hers that the Intended inhabits an unreal world.42

In Voss, by contrast, Laura shares vicariously in every stage in Voss’s pro-

gress through the desert. Her understanding is acquired in a different mode
to that of Voss, yet she sees it as “true knowledge” (V. 446). After the
sequence of events ends with Voss’s death and Laura’s psychic participation
in it through the delirium of her illness, Laura leaves her privileged position
in her wealthy uncle’s house and sets out as a teacher in a school for young
ladies. This will afford her a mode of service to the country she now accepts
as her own.
At one stage, while she lies ill in Sydney, she is represented, through her
delirium, as actually riding along with the expedition. The fusion of the
details of the sick room with those of events in the desert ends with the sug-
gestion of the desert cavalcade appearing actually to enter the Bonner house
and ride down the staircase:

Once in the night, Laura Trevelyan, who was struggling to control the
sheets, pulled herself up and forward, leaning over too far, with the natural
result that she was struck in the face when the horse threw up his head. She did
not think she could bear the pain.
“The martingale,” she cried out, willing herself not to flinch, “We have left
the martingale at the place where we rested.”
[…].
So the party rode down the terrible basalt stairs of the Bonners’ deserted
house, and onward. (V. 358)

Laura’s progress to spiritual salvation is consanguineous with that of Voss,

and, like Voss’s, it is also a simultaneous progress towards acquiring nation.
At the start, she has disavowed any sense of belonging within the country,
but her encounter with Voss triggers a new direction. Like Voss, her ‘sin’,
according to the Judaeo-Christian ethic that underpins the religious themes
of the novel, is that of pride, a disdain for others. Her progress to humility is
marked through her moving from contempt for the physical and the sensual,

42 Ian Watt, Conrad in the Nineteenth Century, 244.

66 WRITING THE NATION ]

as shown in her disgust for “the bodies of these servants” (V. 164), to an
acceptance of her own humanity, primarily through her love for Voss. In the
early days of her recognition of her growing feelings for the explorer, she is
moved to embrace the swelling body of her pregnant convict servant, Rose.
It is a symbolic gesture that prepares for the later events where Laura be-
comes deeply involved with Rose’s childbirth and, with her death, adopts her
daughter Mercy. Events are so orchestrated as to project the impression that
the child is more nearly the fruit of the love between Voss and Laura. Laura’s
spiritual progress and her growing understanding of the country also owe a
particular debt to her convict maid and the vicarious experience of suffering
she is allowed through her involvement with her. At Rose’s funeral, she
writes to Voss of the mystical experience she undergoes on that occasion:

As I stood there […] the material part of myself became quite superfluous,
while my understanding seemed to enter into wind, earth, the ocean beyond,
even the soul of our poor, dead maid. I was nowhere and everywhere at once. I
was destroyed, yet living more intensely than actual sunlight, so that I no longer
feared the face of Death […]. If I suffered, it was to understand the devotion
and suffering of Rose, to love whom had always been an effort! (V. 239)

She goes on to declare:

Finally, I believe I have begun to understand this great country, which we

have been preposterous enough to call ours, and with which I shall be content to
grow since the day we buried Rose. For part of me has now gone into it. Do
you know that a country does not develop through the prosperity of a few
landowners and merchants, but out of the suffering of the humble? I could now
lay my head on the ugliest rock in the land and feel at rest. (V. 239)

Laura’s contribution to the debate on the meaning of ‘country’ and belong-

ing within it needs to be understood in this context. Confessing that she has
experienced directly “very little” of the country, she feels she needs to claim
that what she knows is much more than what she has directly experienced:
“True knowledge comes through death in the country of the mind” (V. 446).
She has, throughout Voss’s journey into the wilderness, been a presence he is
frequently conscious of. Even after the letters between them cease – each
has a constant psychic awareness of the presence of the other and the actual
events in which the other person is caught up. She is also remembered by
Palfreyman in his last moments while walking towards the natives to meet
his death. In the last moments of his life, Voss escapes into a dream of riding
] Voss 67

with Laura through a paradisiacal landscape in which she points out to him
various nourishing blooms for his sustenance. This strengthens him to meet
his death at the hands of Jackie, an event which she appears to be conscious
of through her own delirium as she lies in her fever in Sydney. Her psychic
sharing in the moment of his death is dramatized through her delirious
words:

The young woman was moving feebly on her sickbed, while calling out with
what remained of her strength […].
[…]
“O God,” cried the girl, at last, tearing it out. “It is over. It is over.”
As she spoke, she shivered and glistened.
[…]
“It has broken,” said Aunt Emmy. “The fever has broken!” (V. 395)

As Voss dies, Laura passes through the final crisis of her own illness. So
Laura gains that knowledge which she claims one can gain through “death by
torture in the country of the mind” (V. 446).

The white indigene – the convict?

In Voss, as also in A Fringe of Leaves, the convict must occupy a prominent
space in any study of the novels’ exploration of the possibility of the indige-
nization of the settler–invader. He may well be regarded as already in posses-
sion of the status of ‘white indigene’, even before the drama of the events of
the novel begin. It may be claimed that in this novel White writes back into
the Australian story three important figures whose role in the national narra-
tive official historiographers had long chosen to bypass: the Aborigine, the
woman, and the convict. (Note the official definition of who was an Aus-
tralian in the Bulletin of the 1890s, one that chose to elide mention of all
three.43)
Robert Hughes, in his impressive work on the convict, writes of what he
perceives as a reluctance on the part of Australians to acknowledge this
aspect of their national origins:

Behind the bright diorama of Australia Felix lurked the convicts, some 160,000
of them, clanking their fetters in the penumbral darkness. But on the feelings

43 See the Bulletin definition quoted in the previous chapter.

68 WRITING THE NATION ]

and experiences of these men and women, little was written. They were statis-
tics, absences and finally embarassments.44

To begin with, then, it could be claimed that the first similarity to the indi-
gene lies in that common denial of their legitimacy of placement in the Aus-
tralian story to which they have been subjected despite being an ineradicable
part of the Australian past. The convicts were the outcasts from a British
society which had transported them to the nethermost part of the world with
the strictest injunction against their ever returning to the erstwhile homeland.
The mixture of horror and repugnance that filled the middle-class mind at
the very thought of the transported felon is well-documented by such studies
as Richard White’s and the even more closely researched work of Hughes.45
Most important is the fact that there is substantial documentation of how
escaped convicts fleeing the harshness of the penal settlements sought refuge
with, and survived among, the blacks. (This will be discussed further in the
next chapter, which features another convict figure in Jack Chance.) Hughes
believes that no close bond ever existed between the Aborigines and the
convicts – that, rather, the reverse situation of mutual hostility prevailed,
with the blacks preferring to ally themselves with the obviously powerful
forces of the Government and its soldiers, turning in escaped convicts when-
ever the opportunity arose. Conversely, the emancipist settlers, it seems,
were particularly harsh on Aborigines who attacked their property. Yet
Hughes is also obliged to record that where instances of white men who suc-
cessfully ‘went native’ were recorded, these white men were invariably
convicts:

Without records from the blacks’ side, one can only guess what the structure
of the System contributed to their opinion of whites, but their behavior showed
that if they were to take sides, […] it might as well be with […] the men in red
coats who dispensed the power, the tobacco, the blankets. The idea that the
despised black might have had some “natural” sympathy with the oppressed
convict is the flimsiest sentiment. Across the cultural chasm that separated
them, no such alliances were possible and none were ever made, except for a
few escaped convicts who successfully “went native” and adapted to tribal life.46

44 Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore: A History of the Transportation of Convicts to Australia,
1787–1868 (London: Collins Harvill, 1987): xi.
45 Richard White, “Hell Upon Earth,” in Inventing Australia, 16–28.
46 Hughes, The Fatal Shore, 279.
] Voss 69

Judd is mentioned early in Voss by Bonner, who cites the qualities for which
he has been recommended as a member of the expedition:

“a man of physical strength and moral integrity. An improviser, besides, which

is of the greatest importance in a country where necessities are not always to
hand. […] The circumstances of his transportation were quite ridiculous, I am
led to believe.” (V. 22).

Voss’s cynical interruption, “‘They always are’,” indicates a lack of sympathy

which becomes even more manifest when he meets the convict later and
senses the enormous potential of the man: “a thick-set strong-looking indi-
vidual appeared, and took the body of the unconscious man” (V. 130). This
individual, who takes care of Palfreyman after he faints on arrival at the
Sanderson homestead, is Judd:

The former convict was in every way discreet, which was the more notice-
able in anyone of his bulk and strength. He was, in fact, a union of strength and
delicacy, like some gnarled trees that have been tortured and twisted by time and
weather into exaggerated shapes, but of which the leaves still quiver at each
change, and constantly shed shy, subtle scents. […] What he knew could have
been considerable, though would not escape from him, one suspected, even if
pincers were brought to bear. (V. 133)

Judd is constructed as a figure of great physical and mental strength, a

strength which, it is suggested, has been born of suffering. The image of a
tree with which he is associated, with gnarled trunk and tender leaves, con-
centrates with considerable force and clarity the combined qualities of
strength and delicacy that characterize the man. Sanderson speaks of him as
a valued neighbour: “‘we are able to take advantage of his assistance and
advice’” (V. 134). Judd soon becomes the most valuable member of the ex-
pedition for precisely the qualities Bonner has described earlier.
Voss probes Judd’s motives for joining the expedition, sceptical that, as an
ex-convict, he should wish to serve the Crown. Judd’s response is clear:

“I have had some experience of the country to the northwest. […]. And I con-
sider it my duty to offer my services to the colony on the strength of that
experience.”
“In spite of certain injustices of the Crown?”
The German was honestly interested in such a conundrum of human beha-
viour […].
70 WRITING THE NATION ]

Judd was moving his lips.

“In spite of – yes, in spite of it,” he replied […]. (V. 136)

It should be noted that Judd is in fact offering his services to “‘the colony’.”
He does not make the same identification with the Crown and the colony as
Voss does.
The complexity of the man’s character is suggested through the para-
doxical combination of opposed qualities: strength and sensitivity, confi-
dence and humility. When he confesses to Voss that he is a “‘simple man’,”
it is clear to the latter: “Which can read: ‘most complex,’ Voss suspected” (V.
136). He himself mentions that he has no education, but mentions his “bush
sense.” Voss suspects that Judd may have greater qualities of leadership than
he himself possesses:

Nobody here, he suspected, looking round, had explored his own mind to the
extent that would enable him to bear such experience. Except perhaps the con-
vict, whose mind he could not read. The convict had been tempered in hell,
and, as he had said, survived. (V. 137)

Judd is conscious of his outcast status in the colonial society, but remains
confident of his own powers and value. From the start, Voss is on the defen-
sive with the man, as though he senses a potential threat to his authority –
which, indeed, does eventuate.
As in the case of the Aborigines, the convict figure is constantly evoked in
terms of natural images. He recalls to Voss an image he had encountered on
a previous journey: “A mass of limestone, broken by nature into forms that
were almost human, and filled with a similar, slow, brooding innocence” (V.
136). Judd’s wife, his sons, his dwelling place – all are constructed in terms of
images that align them with the natural world:

... the woman stood watching, after the manner of animals, like the horse which
had come down from the mountain, and the herd of brown goats […].
[…]
He had every intention of examining the woman as if she were an animal. She
was, though. (V. 145)

When his sons appear with Judd, “All three were spotted with dried blood,
and had a smell upon them, of young, waxy lambs” (V. 147). His dwelling
place is equally part of the natural world:
] Voss 71

… a house, or hut, of bleached slabs, that melted into the live trunks of the surrounding
trees. The interstices of the slab hut had been daubed with a yellow clay, but this,
too, had weathered, and formed part of a natural disguise. (V. 145) (my em-
phasis)

Before Judd makes the decision to abandon the expedition, he seeks com-
munion with the animal world:

The man-animal joined them and sat for a while upon the scorching bank. It
was possibly this communion with the beasts that did finally rouse his bemused
human intellect, for in their company, he sensed the threat of the knife, never
far distant from the animal throat. (V. 345)

Shortly afterwards, he announces to Voss his decision to turn back.

With his practical experience and knowledge of the country, it is sug-
gested that Judd should (as his wife states quite explicitly) have been the
leader of the expedition. At the very first halt he informs Voss that they
should have set up camp earlier. It is Judd who mixes the damper and takes
charge of the cooking of the camp; he is also “the keeper of instruments” (V.
194). He ministers to Voss on two occasions, once when he is struck by a
branch and later when he is kicked by the staked mule (V. 21). Judd takes it
on himself to assume command and organize the camp when Voss is
incapacitated, and the latter is obliged to thank him for this, as also when he
has the foresight to disobey Voss’s instruction to put all of the supplies of
flour onto the raft, which is later lost in the river. He has enough confidence
in himself to suggest to Voss that the group make a stop to celebrate Christ-
mas. (In Leichhardt’s journal, this is a decision the explorer apparently makes
on his own, because of his awareness of the importance of the season and its
significance to the group.) Unable to read (like the indigene), Judd finds his
peace through silent communion with nature (V. 203). His ability to straddle
both worlds is nowhere more apparent than when he prepares a Christmas
feast for the group in the middle of the wilderness.
Judd appears to have acquired the same bush skills and confidence of the
blacks in the wilderness. The same day of Palfreyman’s death,

Judd followed the tracks of the stock, [...] and there found them congregated
along the banks of a river […]. Thin horses stood […]. One or two surviving
goats looked at the newcomer without moving, admitting him temporarily into
the fellowship of beasts. (V. 345)
72 WRITING THE NATION ]

Just as with the Aborigines, he seems able to shuffle off the allegiance to the
hierarchical structures of the white society. Although for the most part he
has accepted the leadership of Voss even when the latter has made flawed
decisions, he announces without hesitation or apology his decision to return,
like Dugald. Like the Aborigines, he also shows a capacity to resist the domi-
neering behaviour of Voss:

“Do you not realize you are under my leadership?” Voss asked, although
quite calmly, now that it had happened.
“Not any more, I am not,” Judd replied.
[…]
“It is not cowardice, if there is hell before and hell behind, and nothing to
choose between them,” Judd protested. “I will go home.” (V. 345)

Angus, the young landowner, conscious of his status, had at their first en-
counter shown reluctance to sit down at the same table with the ex-convict.
There is a fine irony, then, in his decision to throw in his lot with Judd:

At that moment, his leader, as Judd the convict had become, put his strong
hand on the landowner’s arm and asked him to do something.
[…]
He went to do it, and at the same moment gave his life into the keeping of
Judd. As the latter’s hands were capable ones, it could have been a wise move,
although the young man himself felt he was betraying his class, both then and
forever. (V. 347)

Not surprisingly, he is the only white man who survives the expedition.
Jackie, the Aboriginal boy, is the other survivor. When he stumbles upon the
remains of Turner and Angus in the desert and realizes that he had not
found the remains of Judd, his recollection of the man reproduces again the
natural images of tremendous strength and durability that characterize the
construction of the convict:

As he left the country of the dead behind him, he realized that he had not found
the remains of Mr. Judd. Journeying along, through the glare of the sun and the
haze of memory, the form of the big white man was riding with him on and off,
the veins in the back of his broad hand like the branches of a tree, his face a second
copper sun. (V. 420) [my emphases]

Like Jackie, he also possesses the key to the final events but, also like Jackie,
he is struck with insanity. (In the scheme of symbolic configurations in
] Voss 73

White’s works, this is always a state that gives the experiencing consciousness
access to remarkable insights.) Jackie’s voice is left to echo in the desert
emptiness, but Judd’s speech, despite its confusions, remains accessible to
the reader, who realizes that his pronouncements have a resonance which
encapsulate the larger themes of the novel. The convict must, then, be con-
sidered a vital link between the white world and the black. Indeed, at the very
end, Judd survives only because he has found refuge with a group of Abori-
gines. (White seems here to have drawn on the continuing reports, recorded
in Chisholm, of a wild white man, suspected to have been a survivor from
the original Leichhardt expedition.):

Amongst the gentlemen, the talk was principally of the discovery of the wild
white man, said to be a survivor from the expedition led by that mad German
twenty years before. The man, who professed to have been living all those years
with a tribe of aboriginals, had been brought to Sydney since his rescue, and had
attended the unveiling of a memorial to his leader that same day in the Domain.
(V. 436)

While skin colour may seem to align him superficially with the whites, his
original rejection by the imperial power in his being sentenced to transporta-
tion positions him as an outcast in the colonialist world, and his acquired
bonding with the Australian environment situates him closer to the black
world than to the white.47
The last comments offered by the half-crazed Judd are a curious mixture
of fact and confusions of fact with fiction, but they encapsulate some of the
novel’s central themes: “‘Well, you see, if you live and suffer long enough in
a place, you do not leave it altogether. Your spirit is still there’” (V. 443).
What the old convict offers here is a summary of the indigenization process
which it seems the white colonizer must undergo if he is to attain the state of
belonging in the land of his adoption. He himself, even before his parti-
cipation in the expedition, suffered the “hell” of the convict experience. This
has endowed him with a strength which, it seems, is beyond that of all the
other white men, who have still to go through this suffering before they can
acquire the right to belong in the land.

47 Note the scene when Voss visits Judd in his own home: he is very much at the centre

of a mandala as he shows Voss the spring from which his house is supplied with water. In
the same vignette, there is the detail of an old gallows, a symbol of convict suffering at the
hands of English justice.
74 WRITING THE NATION ]

Rose Portion
The convict presence must include that of Rose Portion. Not only in her
name but also (like Judd) in her very physical appearance, she is associated
with the natural world:

“There is a man here, miss, asking for your uncle,” said Rose.
And stood breathing.
[…]
Something had made this woman monotonous. Her big breasts moved dully
as she spoke, or she would stand, and the weight of her silences impressed itself
on strangers. […].
[…]
[…] She wore a dress of brown stuff, that was most marvellously suited to
her squat body. (V. 7–8)

There is the suggestion almost of an autochthonous presence in the phrases

that construct her: she is associated with the colour brown, which, in the
taxonomy of White’s symbolism, suggests the earth and natural forces. She
and her convict lover Jack Slipper are also associated with the fecund natural
world of the garden of the Bonner house, which is also the setting for Voss’s
and Laura’s most intimate exchanges. Laura has encountered both Rose and
the man Jack Slipper in this part of the garden. She is not surprised, there-
fore, when she learns of Rose’s pregnancy.
Like Judd, Rose speaks of suffering that she has been through, the com-
mon experience of so many convicts. Robert Hughes avers that the horrors
of the convict experience attached mostly only to such places of punishment
as Norfolk Island and most were able to serve out their sentences, “got their
tickets-of-leave and in due course were absorbed into colonial society as free
citizens. Most of them (if one can judge by the surviving letters) wanted to
stay in Australia.”48 The suffering of many of the latter, like Rose Portion,
derived more nearly from the horrific conditions which had obtained in the
England of their experience, driving so many to lives of crime. It is suggested
that the crime for which Rose had been transported was possibly that of
infanticide. This was commonplace in the social conditions Hughes de-
scribes so eloquently in the introductory chapter of his study, which details
the grossness of the miseries and squalor behind the façade of middle-class
prosperity in Georgian England:

48 Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore, xiii.

] Voss 75

London was judged the greatest city in the world, but also the worst smelling.
Sewers still ran into open drains […]. Armies of rats rose from tenement cellars
to go foraging in daylight.
The living were so crowded that there was scarcely room to bury the dead.
Around St Martin’s, St. James’ and St. Giles-in-the-Fields, there were large open
pits filled with the rotting cadavers of paupers whose friends could get them no
better burial: they were called “Poor’s Holes” and remained a London
commonplace until the 1790s.
[…].
The belief in a swelling wave of crime was one of the great social facts of
Georgian England. It shaped the laws, and the colonization of Australia was its
partial result.49

There is obvious symbolic significance in the detail that the child the convict
woman Rose conceives in Australia is named Mercy and is adopted by Laura
as though it is the child of her relationship with Voss. She signifies the hope
for a better future for this group of outcasts from the imperial homeland.
Even as the indigene is, for Voss, the vehicle through which he is forced
to acquire humility and thereby attain salvation along with a claim to belong
in the land, for Laura, the female convict Rose becomes a conduit of spiritual
salvation and of belonging within the country of which she had originally
declared, “It is not my country.” Rose offers a medium for the embracing of
ordinary humanity, the overcoming of Laura’s own disgust of the flesh. The
child the convict maid conceives through her liaison with Jack Slipper is
adopted by Laura and through the varied novelistic strategies assumes also
the aspect of the child born of Laura’s and Voss’s spiritual union, a marriage
never physically consummated but presented as an event which has taken
place through the psychic connection sustained between the two. Even as
Voss’s pride is broken down through his sufferings in the desert, Laura’s
pride, originally expressed in disgust at the physical and sensual aspects of
the human being, is overcome through her love for Voss. Rose seems to
sense the girl’s emotional needs: she is the silent yet sentient presence at the
first meeting of the two lovers; she is conscious of Laura’s emotional stress
when the latter is unable to sleep, shortly after her meeting with Voss, and
rouses Laura in time to watch the departure of the Osprey. Laura participates
in Rose’s labour and, it would seem, shares in the agony of her childbirth. At
Rose’s death, Laura undergoes a mystical experience which signifies her

49 Robert Hughes, “A Horse Foaled by an Acorn,” The Fatal Shore, 20, 25.
76 WRITING THE NATION ]

attainment of a new state of spiritual insight and an expansion of under-

standing of her adoptive country.

The outcome of contact

In the case of Voss, as with Laura too, the journey to spiritual salvation and
to nationhood are one. ‘Going native’ in Heart of Darkness is the equivalent of
going savage. In Conrad’s novella, the outcome of white contact with the
black world releases all that is darkest and most vile in human nature. Voss’s
immersion in the Aboriginal world (and Laura’s vicarious participation in the
same experience) brings self-knowledge and with it a saving humility which,
according to the Judaeo-Christian philosophy of the novel, enables attain-
ment of spiritual wholeness as well as a sense of belonging in this land. And,
as mentioned earlier, Terry Goldie has pointed out that both White and the
Canadian writer Rudy Wiebe are concerned not only with “a search for indi-
viduation usually traced along mystical patterns” but also with “a search for
country.”50
The explorer figure, the instrument of the colonizer, becomes transmuted
into the figure of the indigene-elect. In juxtaposing a text such as Voss with
its originary materials, the impression is that the novel actually articulates and
foregrounds possibilities that lie dormant in the imperialist text of the ex-
plorer; the tragic role played by the indigene himself in the story of his dis-
possession and also, conversely, in the figure of the explorer, the transforma-
tive possibilities for the European from settler–invader into settler–indigene.
In the enforced working-together of indigene and European, through shared
trial and tribulation the recognition emerges that the land that sustained the
indigene can also sustain the European, and outlines the possibility of an
inheritance in which both may claim a share. This descent into the black
world, then, is shown to have salvific possibilities.
While in the case of Voss and Laura the process of transformation has
been projected in some detail, there is scarcely a character who has not ex-
perienced an expansion of consciousness. Even those who seem barely
aware of questions of nation or destiny seem to be caught up in this pro-
gress. No less than in the case of Voss, when Jackie discovers the remains of
the rest of the expedition in the course of his wanderings, even the bodies of
Turner and Angus are shown as merging with the Australian earth. No less

50 Terry Goldie, Fear and Temptation, 192.

] Voss 77

than Voss, after death, they too are “still there in the country,” as Jackie the
Aboriginal boy discovers in his roaming through the wilderness:

Once at dusk, in an outcrop of rock, he came upon the hip-bone of a horse still
wearing its grey hide, and next to it, a snaffle ring that the rust was eating. […]
he approached the fusty clothes that contained the few remains of a man. […] It
was, he saw, the last of the one they called Turner […].
[…] Beyond the rocks, with their cutting edges of glass, he found a handful
of hair. He pulled the tuft as if it were a plant – at least it was growing out of the
sand – and as he shook it free he shivered […]. This, the blackfellow realized,
would be the hair of Mr. Angus.
[…] all night the spirits of the dead were with him. The thin soul of Tur-
ner was hanging like a possum, by its tail, from a tree. There was a cracking of
sticks and whips by Mr. Angus, who would rise up very close in a huge, white,
blunt pillar of furry light. The boy thought he would not be able to endure it
[…]. (V. 420)

The one Aboriginal figure who was deeply imbricated with the white world,
Jackie, is also changed as a result of the encounter. The very day he kills Voss
at the behest of his adoptive tribe, he runs away from them:

On the most fateful day of his life, this boy, who had experienced too much
too early, had run from the camp of his adoptive tribe.
[…]. Terrible knives of thought, sharpened upon the knives of the sun, were
cutting into him. (V. 419)

He is naked except for the bone-handled knife given him as a gift by Voss
and is relieved when he loses it. He comes upon the last remnants of the
expedition when he stumbles upon the remains of Turner and Angus in the
desert and remains haunted by his knowledge: “He was slowly becoming
possessed of the secrets of the country” (V. 421). He is regarded as a seer,
and the future he glimpses could be one in which he sees a continuing place
for the white man in a world which before had only known the black people.
J.J. Healy sees him as a forerunner of Alf Dubbo in White’s later novel Riders
in the Chariot, the artist and visionary who expresses in painting what Jackie
seems able to intuit but remains unable to express: the possibility of a shared
heritage in the land for both black and white.

]^
3 A Fringe of Leaves

“I was one of them.”

— Patrick White, A Fringe of Leaves

T
HE ENORMOUS ARCHIVE generated by the story of Eliza
Fraser has now reached such proportions that, as those Aboriginal
voices now beginning to make themselves heard protest, it has
quite erased attention to the history of the original people, the Badtjala, of
Fraser Island. As one commentator (a descendant of the Badtjala people)
puts it,
In 1836 she was marooned for five weeks on Fraser Island and her saga has
been allowed to continue for throughout two centuries. Mrs. Fraser’s incarcera-
tion on the island would, in turn, imprison the traditional owners of Fraser
Island, the Badtjala. The absence of a dialogue with the Badtjala has irrevocably
damaged and put this people to rest. I often wonder when she too will be put to
rest.1

One almost feels the need of an apology for yet another study focusing on
the Fraser story, except that in this case the narrative requires a focus on the
indigenous people and makes the case for White’s novel as a work that tells
their story alongside that of Eliza. While his novel, like Voss, was broadly
based on an historical incident, it was no part of White’s intention to remain
faithful to historical evidence: “I feel historical reconstructions are too
limiting […] so I did not stick to the facts.”2 One of the more rewarding re-

1 Fiona Foley, “A Blast from the Past,” 165.

2 David Marr, Patrick White: A Life, 542.
80 WRITING THE NATION ]

sults of this flexibility, as he himself pointed out, was that Ellen Roxburgh
emerges as a much more complex figure than the historical Eliza, whom
White describes as “a shrew from the Orkneys.” Since he knew something of
Cornwall, and nothing of the Orkneys, he also changed her place of origin to
Cornwall. Still, with this (as with any novel broadly related to an historical
event) it is of interest to compare the original historical material with the
novelist’s re-invention of it. Moreover, as with Voss, exploration of the
‘affiliations’ of the text (Said’s terminology) can reinforce understanding of
the whole work.
Jill Ward has documented some of the main sources on which White has
drawn, though more recent researchers have been critical of Ward’s short-
comings.3 Jim Davidson has traced the ‘mythologization’ of Mrs Fraser in
some detail, but Kay Schaffer’s extensively researched book appears to have
superseded the work of most earlier scholars, while the body of writing in all
of the genres, straddling countries and continents, continues to grow.4 The
nineteenth century accounts consisted of the official record (two accounts
given by Mrs Fraser herself, one of which was a later account sensationalized
in the media and broadsheet versions circulated in England and also in the
U S A ) and the account by John Curtis entitled The Shipwreck of the Stirling
Castle (1838). Curtis’s account was designed primarily to give a favourable ac-
count of Mrs Fraser, who had become the subject of a Lord Mayor’s Com-
mission of Inquiry on suspicion that she had sought to extort public money
to her advantage.5 The Curtis account contained Eliza’s final version of
events plus that of four other survivors. While it found her culpable on some
minor issues, it represented her as a virtuous, suffering woman, thus justify-
ing the Lord Mayor’s institution of a public collection on her behalf. In-
cidentally, it also vindicated the virtues of the British race and civilization.
The nineteenth-century narratives were generally colonialist in orientation;
the demonstrated savagery of the natives served to justify the colonial project

3 See Ann Rebecca Ling, “Voss and A Fringe of Leaves: Community and Place in the
Historical Novels of Patrick White,” 40–41; Jill Ward, “Patrick White’s A Fringe of Leaves:
History and Fiction,” Australian Literary Studies 8 (1978): 402–18.
4 Jim Davidson, “The Fatal Shore: The Mythologization of Mrs. Fraser,” Meanjin 3 (1990):

449–61; Kay Schaffer, In the Wake of First Contact (Melbourne: Cambridge UP, 1995).
5 John Curtis, The Shipwreck of the Stirling Castle (London: George Virtue, Ivy Lane, 1838).

Curtis’s account turns the narrative into a justification for civilized intervention in a savage
world.
] A Fringe of Leaves 81

and highlighted the responsibility of the British to bring light and civilization
to these benighted beings. The woman’s escape vindicated the power of Em-
pire. The barely concealed salacious interest in the sensational material was
also exploited to maximum effect in the general reportage of events.
The twentieth-century transformations belong mostly to the 1970s and
1990s. White’s novel appeared in the first phase, but its spirit is more nearly
akin to the works of the later decade.6 Michael Alexander’s Mrs. Fraser on the
Fatal Shore (1976) falls more into the category of populist history and was the
first work of the twentieth century to draw on the Fraser materials. It seems
to have influenced all subsequent re-writings of the material.7 In it her ‘cap-
tivity’ was stretched to six months, from the five weeks of the records. The
woman is constructed as domineering and exploitative, yet also endowed
with a sensual attraction. Alexander’s version also added the material dealing
with the involvement of a second convict, Bracefell, who claimed to have
delivered Eliza to the point where she could be rescued by the official search
party with which the convict John Graham (whose name is mentioned in the
official despatch) was directly involved. The bush idyll which the woman was
supposed to have spent with the convict before her official rescue has also
been incorporated into Patrick White’s novel.8 Beginning with the Sidney
Nolan paintings in the late 1940s and moving on to the Burstall–Williamson
film (1976), Schaffer notes a tendency in the Australian texts towards a
nationalistic highlighting of the figure of the convict as an Australian folk
hero and the positioning of Eliza as an exploitative female more nearly
aligned to the colonial power.9
There is some point in glancing over these varied renditions of the Fraser
story in order to appreciate better the unique aspects of White’s treatment of
the materials. Kay Schaffer comments thus on the versions of the 1970s:

The Australian adaptations of the story from Nolan’s paintings to the novels
and film of the 1970’s retain the nineteenth century preoccupation with captivity

6 See Kay Schaffer, In the Wake of First Contact, ch. 6–10, for a comprehensive discussion

of the twentieth-century versions of the Fraser story. Ch. 7 (157–75) is devoted to a dis-
cussion of White’s novel.
7 Michael Alexander, Mrs. Fraser on the Fatal Shore (London: Michael Joseph, 1971).

8 See Michael Alexander, “Variations on a Theme of Rescue,” in Alexander, Mrs. Fraser

on the Fatal Shore, 108–23.

9 See Kay Schaffer, “And Now for the Movie: Popular Accounts,” in Schaffer, In the

Wake of First Contact, 203–27.

82 WRITING THE NATION ]

and rescue of a white woman in an alien environment, amongst members of an

alien race. In these twentieth century versions, however, her life is threatened
more by sexual peril than by native savagery and cannibalism […]. Within the
texts of the 1970’s which might reflect a new phase in the Australian nationalist
tradition […] Mrs. Fraser is represented […] as the seducer and betrayer of her
convict rescuer, David Bracefell. […] Bracefell comes to represent the Austra-
lian underdog, and Mrs. Fraser his hostile and haughty British nemesis.10

Barbara Blackman’s collaboration with the composer Peter Sculthorpe on

the music-theatre piece Eliza Fraser Sings (1978), although the first represen-
tation of the story by a female, did not dramatically alter the construction of
Mrs Fraser. Blackman records that she “was concerned with her bodily ex-
periences and the effects I supposed it might have on her mind.”11 Her
libretto moved from a focus on the experience of childbirth and shipwreck
to the island and hysteria, the dream state of the pastoral and thence to the
Hyde Park fair where Eliza is supposed to have been on display as a side-
show exhibit.
While Schaffer’s readings of these varied renderings of Eliza Fraser are
consistently insightful, her analysis of A Fringe of Leaves seems to bypass the
very real resonances which reach beyond all of the other texts and in fact
contrast with them considerably.12 Schaffer does allow that White’s treat-
ment of Eliza is “more complex,” that she is a medium through which he
expresses a critique of the English inheritance and the brutalities of the con-
vict system, and that her story, as constructed by White, possibly projects an
explanation of the spiritual emptiness of contemporary Australian society.13
Nevertheless, she still sees White as projecting Eliza as the stereotypical in-
stinctual female, although he grants her more complexity and dignity in that,

10 Kay Schaffer, “ ‘ We are like Eliza’: Twentieth-Century Australian Responses to the

Eliza Fraser Saga,” in Constructions of Colonialism, ed. Ian J. McNiven, Lynette Russell & Kay
Schaffer (Leicester & New York: Leicester UP, 1998): 80.
11 Barbara Blackman, “Barbara’s Eliza,” in Constructions of Colonialism, ed. Ian J. McNiven,

Lynette Russell & Kay Schaffer (Leicester & New York: Leicester U P , 1998): 154.
12 First presented in “Australian Mythologies: The Eliza Fraser Story and Constructions of

the Feminine in Patrick White’s A Fringe of Leaves and Sidney Nolan’s Eliza Fraser Paintings,”
in Us / Them: Translation, Transcription and Identity in Post-Colonial Literary Cultures, ed. Gordon
Collier (Cross / Cultures 6; Amsterdam & Atlanta G A : Rodopi, 1992): 371–83.
13 Kay Schaffer, “Patrick White’s Novel A Fringe of Leaves,” in Schaffer, In the Wake of

First Contact, 159.

] A Fringe of Leaves 83

through her transgressions, redemptive possibilities emerge for society as a

whole. That Eliza/Ellen emerges as a potential new Australian (a point of
particular interest in this study) is not even suggested in Schaffer’s analysis.
Schaffer does refer to the possibilities of refreshing contemporary white
civilization through contact with the ‘sacredness’ of the indigenous culture in
White’s evocation of Aboriginal society, but other comments in her analysis
(as shall be seen) appear to work against this conclusion.
White’s contribution is nearer in spirit to the new departures presented by
the writers of the 1990s. These reflect awareness of new configurations in
socio-cultural relationships that have emerged relatively lately in the national
context. Allen Marret’s reworking of the Fraser legend in a Japanese Nō play
(performed in Sydney and Tokyo in 1989–90) and Gillian Coote’s docu-
mentary Island of Lies (A B C , 1991) are radically different in their attitudes to
black/white relationships and the treatment of the Aboriginal world. Mar-
ret’s Nō play in English entitled Eliza constructs her in two ways. In Act 1,
she is represented as a white woman claiming victimization at the hands of
horrid savages, which suggests that much of what she presents here is lies. In
Act 2, she appears as her ‘true’ self, a visionary with access to spiritual power
granted her by the indigenous custodians of the country. The guilty white-
settler culture is thus presented as transformed by the indigenous culture.
This is strikingly close to the spirit of White’s novel. Gillian Coote’s docu-
mentary film focuses on sites of past massacres of Aboriginal peoples and
the manner in which white materialism has debased the land. Here the ghost
of Mrs Fraser searches for the lies underwriting the history of white settle-
ment, and one of the original white settlers on the island and a descendant of
the Badtjala people tell the stories of their people. Both reject Eliza because
of her lies about the indigenous people, but while the text does not permit
Eliza/Ellen the potential of acquiring indigeneity, the value for the indige-
nous world which it expresses is still aligned to White’s vision.
Ann Ling suggests that White’s insight into the Aboriginal world may
have been the result of his intuitive gifts; as an artist, his modes of apprehen-
sion are non-rational.14 There is considerable evidence that White did seek
out other information; most interestingly, it was information that was not de-
pendent only on white researchers. White’s meeting with Wilf Reeves and his
verdict on the Fraser saga (as quoted by Marr) represents the first Aboriginal
pronouncement on the continuing European obsession with the Eliza figure

14 Amy Ling, “Voss and A Fringe of Leaves,” 35.

84 WRITING THE NATION ]

in this episode. There is an appositeness, then, in paying due attention to

Aboriginal perspectives on the Eliza Fraser story before moving on to dis-
cuss White’s handling of the materials.
While it appears that White’s attention was first drawn to the Fraser story
by his friend the painter Sidney Nolan, and that he reproduced in his text
some of the details of the version recounted to him by Nolan, he also con-
ducted his own research into the background of these events. Marr records
in his biography that White met with Wilf Reeves, whose father had been a
timber-getter on the island (his mother was the daughter of a white mission-
ary), and he was himself a poet and storyteller. It was the first time White
had sat down to converse with an Aborigine.
Reeves urged White to be sceptical about the official accounts of Mrs
Fraser’s ordeal. She had created a sensation with her account of the indig-
nities foisted on her by the natives, tales of woe that were the basis of The
Shipwreck of the Stirling Castle. The Aboriginals, however, passed on a different
story, of white men who were welcomed at first as reincarnated spirits, and a
white woman who survived and was absorbed into the life of the tribe until
more whites appeared to take her away.15
White also turned to his friend David Moore, an anthropologist at the
Australian Museum in Sydney, who confirmed the bankruptcy of materials in
museums and libraries. Marr concludes, ‘So the ceremonies and speech of
the Aborigines in A Fringe of Leaves were a feat of White’s imagination.”16
The earliest investigation into the archaeological potential of the island was
actually financed by White:
John Sinclair and his conservation group – the Fraser Island Defence Organiza-
tion (better known as F I D O ) – employed Peter Lauer (then Curator of the
Anthropology Museum at the University of Queensland) to undertake a recon-
naissance survey to determine the potential and scope of and significance of
archaeological sites. The survey cost $1000 and was funded by famous novelist
Patrick White. According to his biographer David Marr, White was frustrated
by the lack of available knowledge on the island’s Aboriginal past and wanted to
be actively involved in the anti-mining struggle.17

15 David Marr, Patrick White: A Life, 381.

16 Patrick White: A Life, 382.
17 Ian J. McNiven, “Shipwreck saga as archaeological text: Reconstructing Fraser

Island’s Aboriginal past,” in Constructions of Colonialism, ed. Ian J. McNiven, Lynette Russell
& Kay Schaffer (Leicester & New York: Leicester U P , 1998): 38.
] A Fringe of Leaves 85

White’s intervention certainly provided the first publicized comment by an

Aboriginal person on the vexed history of Eliza; the work he composed re-
flects that alternative interpretation. Reeves was the grand-uncle of Fiona
Foley, the female Aboriginal artist (quoted earlier) who rejected the dispro-
portionate influence the Fraser myth has had on the the Badtjala people. Her
own art affords for the first time a public Aboriginal pronouncement on the
Fraser story. A sophisticated artist and activist, she claims that her art, “like
all Aboriginal art, is political.”18 In her 1991 exhibition, she had ten paintings
of Mrs Fraser, represented by a decapitated female head evocatively posi-
tioned in different frames. For example, the head is depicted as caught in a
rat-trap, suggesting reaction against the inordinate attention being paid to a
white icon of colonialism.
Foley, a Badtjala woman from the original indigenous community of
Fraser Island, laments the fact that the role of indigenous women on the
continent has been completely ignored:

The dilemma is that (as an indigenous woman) I cannot recall one Aboriginal
heroine […] why is it that the heroine could only be white? [...]. Her black coun-
terpart has not left a single mark in Australian literature, yet in this landscape her
skeletal remains at Lake Mungo have been carbon dated in the region of 30,000
years.19

She objects vigorously to the continued over-emphasis on Eliza Fraser. She

mentions a number of contemporary indigenous women who have accom-
plished great feats in their work among the different communities, yet whose
work has never been publicized. Perhaps the most eloquent argument she
advances is the photograph of a young Badtjala woman (extracted from her
retrieval of Badjtala archival material) who is one of her forebears: “name-
less, black and defiant […]. She does not appear in a Patrick White novel or
in a Sidney Nolan painting, totally unknown and of whom there is no other
evidence or record.” Foley presents her as a foil to the over-exposed Eliza.20
It could well be imagined, though, that the Badtjala woman does appear in
the Patrick White novel, in the image of the young girl whom Ellen glimpses
diving for lily roots, thus affording a glimpse into the young Badtjala wo-
man’s life. Although she dies tragically, Ellen’s participation in a ritual con-

18 Schaffer, In the Wake of First Contact, 247.

19 Fiona Foley, “A Blast from the Past,” in Constructions of Colonialism, 164.
20 Foley, “A Blast from the Past,” 165.
86 WRITING THE NATION ]

sumption of her body is an image also of her continued survival in and

through Ellen’s story, so that, at least in White’s narrative, the Badjtala
woman lives alongside Ellen/Eliza.
Earlier Aboriginal accounts of the Fraser story have surfaced as a result of
scholarly investigations.21 In 1874 Archibald Meston spoke to “old blacks at
Noosa and Fraser Island” and obtained their interpretation of much that had
transpired. Indeed, in 1898, he still knew at Fraser Island “two old blacks
who had seen them come ashore.” Concerning Eliza Fraser, Meston wrote:
“[…] she must have either had a serious quarrel with truth or else her head was
badly affected by her experiences […] certainly she gave a wildly improbable tale
in Brisbane, accusing the blacks of deeds quite foreign to their known character,
and quite unheard of before or since in aboriginal annals […].”
The old blacks in the seventies told Meston “a story very different from that
of the lady” to the effect that Europeans “were received in a friendly manner
[…] and passed on in canoes to the mainland at Inskip Point to be forwarded to
the white people at the Brisbane Convict Settlement.”22

Olga Miller has placed on record what the Badtjala people themselves still
recall about the sojourn of the white woman. Here, too, it appears from their
account that there was no attempt to keep her captive; that once she was
handed over to the women, they had actually despatched her, duly marked
with ochre signs indicating that she was not to be harmed, to the groups
further down the coast so she could be handed over to the search party that
was looking for survivors of the wreck. A man called Durrumboi, an escaped
convict living among them, had been given the task, and that this was duly
accomplished. The elders had later interrogated the man about reports that
had come to them that she had complained about being raped by him, but
he had maintained that “he had never touched her at all.”23 Olga Miller’s

21 Raymond Evans & Jan Walker, “These Strangers, Where Are They Going?” Aboriginal–
European Relations in the Fraser Island and Wide-Bay Region 1770–1900 (Occasional Papers
in Anthropology; Queensland: Department of History, University of Queensland,
1977): 39–105.
22 Fiona Foley, “A Blast from the Past,” 44.

23 Olga Miller, “K’gari, Mrs. Fraser and Butchulla Oral Tradition,” in Constructions of

Colonialism, ed. Ian J. McNiven, Lynette Russell & Kay Schaffer (Leicester & New York:
Leicester U P , 1998): 28–36.
] A Fringe of Leaves 87

view is that Mrs Fraser was “‘a very big waterhole,’ and that means you’re a
big fibber.”24
An excellent short account of the original events, citing relevant docu-
mentary evidence, is contained in Elaine Brown’s chapter in Constructions of
Colonialism.25 Brown, however, does not include any reference to the convict
Bracefell’s version of events. This formed no part of the official account,
which mentioned only the convict Graham, who had assisted the Govern-
ment search party that rescued Mrs Fraser. White’s narrative draws on the
story of the convict Bracefell, which only surfaced several years after the key
events in an account given by Henry Stuart Russell in his memoirs entitled
Genesis of Queensland (1888), where the author recounts an encounter with a
runaway convict who had spoken of Mrs Fraser and of assistance he had
given her to escape from the blacks, and how she had rounded on him,
threatening to complain about him when they neared the white settlement,
so that he had run back into the bush. Michael Alexander’s book, which
seems to have been a source for several of the incidents White incorporates
into A Fringe of Leaves, deals with this material in some detail. He believes that
there is a theory, “which has crystallized into local acceptance, that Graham’s
account of the rescue, for all of its convincing circumstances, does not tell
the whole story, and that Mrs. Fraser’s salvation involved another convict,
living with the aborigines at the time, named Bracefell.”26
In White’s novel woven out of this medley of materials, similar motifs
recur (as in Voss) of the autonomy of the indigenous world; reversal of hege-
monic patterns of relationship between black and white races; and new vari-
ations on the theme of indigenization. Here, too, the black/white encounter
is constructed as an episode which generates enhanced understanding of
concepts of race and nation besides spiritual enrichment and upliftment of
the protagonists. If this text, like Voss before it, can be regarded as a mode of
writing-back to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the choice of a white female
protagonist immediately signals a radical challenge to colonialist narrative. In
Voss, Laura’s vicarious participation in her lover’s sufferings in the desert can
be regarded as a prefiguring of the central events in A Fringe of Leaves, but

24 Olga Miller, “K’gari, Mrs.Fraser and Butchulla Oral Tradition,” 39.

25 Elaine Brown, “Eliza Fraser: An historical record,” in Constructions of Colonialism, ed.
Ian J. McNiven, Lynette Russell & Kay Schaffer (Leicester & New York: Leicester U P ,
1998): 13–26.
26 Michael Alexander, Mrs. Fraser on the Fatal Shore (London: Michael Joseph, 1971): 108.
88 WRITING THE NATION ]

whereas Laura never really moves physically out of the comfort of the Bon-
ner home in Sydney, Ellen is plucked from her aristocratic home in Chelten-
ham and sent right across the world to Australia. She is then subjected to the
experience of living among the most ‘primitive’ of peoples, the Australian
Aborigines. Lynette Russell records: “The commonly held belief was that in-
digenous Australians represented the lowest form of humanity.”27
In Heart of Darkness, Kurtz’s betrothed remains in Europe, an ethereal
image of angelic purity and beauty, protected from the truth about Kurtz. In
White’s novel, an English gentlewoman, possibly the iconic figure of Western
civilization, is flung right into the heart of the Australian wilderness.28 As-
pects of class and gender give an added slant to the experiences explored
within the trajectory of events. Where other writers have tended to maximize
the salacious possibilities of a white woman being held in captivity by ‘sav-
ages’ for a length of time, in A Fringe of Leaves, as shall be seen, the gender of
the protagonist works positively to enhance her capacity to enter into the life
of the community and actually become “one of them.”

Autonomy of the indigenous world

The world of the indigene emerges as an autonomous order in which the
initial clash with the whites is merely an episode, quickly over with the defeat
of the whites. The advance of the whites into their territory having been re-
pelled, the women of the tribe are left to deal with the female captive, and
the group returns to its customary activities. Ellen Gluyas observes that
“round her the blacks were proceeding with their various duties, beneath a
splendid sky, beside a lake the colour of raw cobalt shot with bronze.”29
After their meal,

27 Lynette Russell, “Mere trifles and faint representations: The representations of savage
life offered by Eliza Fraser,” in Constructions of Colonialism, ed. Ian J. McNiven, Lynette
Russell & Kay Schaffer (Leicester & New York: Leicester U P , 1998): 52.
28 See review of Schaffer’s investigations of this text for an articulation of the particular

attraction of the Fraser story: “a white woman had crossed the barrier between black and
white”; also the difficulty for them to accept that sexual relations between black man and
white woman were less frequent than that between black woman and white man. After all,
exploitation of the female was part of the spoils of the victor in war from primeval times.
29 Patrick White, A Fringe of Leaves (London: Jonathan Cape, 1976): 247. Further page

references are in the main text with “FL.”

] A Fringe of Leaves 89

While dusk crept amongst them […] an elder rose and led the tribe in a kind
of lament. [...] the natives were at their prayers, for their wails sounded formal
rather than spontaneously emotional. (FL. 248)

Early the next morning, the tribe awakens, repeating their incantations of the
evening before. Ellen observes that “the men were gathering up their spears,
clubs, nets and ropes with the solemnity of the superior sex preparing for an
expedition. The men did look superior” (FL. 250). Thereafter the rituals of
community life take over: striking camp, celebrating a good hunt, mourning
the dead or preparing for a corroboree; indeed, “The whole of life by now
revolved round the search for food” (FL. 253). When the men return to the
camp with a kangaroo carcass slung on a pole and others return with a good
catch of fish, it is a cause for celebration.
Evans and Walker quote one native informant’s description of how in-
timately the Aborigines’ way of life harmonized with their environment:

Kangaroos were fat when the fern leaf wattle was in flower - opossums when
the Apple Tree (Nakur) was in bloom. The carpet snake was ready for eating
when a fruit called Mu:rum (Wild Passion Fruit ) was ripe. The Kangaroo rat or
Baru:ga was hunted when a tree leafed palm called Gingam that grows about one
foot high was in flower […].30

It is only lately that Aboriginal voices have provided any insights into the cul-
ture of the Badtjala people who were the original occupants of the island. In
her brief contribution, Olga Miller indicates that within this relatively small
group there were a range of variations in relation to cultural obligations. She
uses a map with numbers to indicate the distribution of the groups:

Each of these clans had a job to do. It’s just the same as any society. Number
One, the Wunapinga, were the ones who taught all about hunting and the
making of weapons […]. Number Two were the fishermen, and they taught all
about making canoes, and fishing lines […] Number Five were the clan whch
looked after all the arts. They were the song writers and the dancers […].31

In A Fringe of Leaves, Ellen seems to be mostly with one particular group of

natives, but when preparations for the corroboree begin she becomes aware
that they are members of a still larger group. Note the details of the prepara-

30 Raymond Evans & Jan T. Walker, “These Strangers, Where Are They Going?,” 59.
31 Olga Miller, “K’gari, Mrs. Fraser and Butchulla Oral Tradition,” 31.
90 WRITING THE NATION ]

tions, the setting of the stage, and the actual performance, all of which sug-
gests a long-established culture:

The darkness erupted at last, hurling itself in distinguishable waves into the
firelit foreground. White-ribbed men […] performed prodigious feats relating to
hunting and warfare.
The rows of women swayed in time with darkness […].
The dance performed by each successive tribe made its own comment. Now
there was a great snake uncoiling, at first slowly, then in involuted frenzy. Arms
worked so hard their elbows threatened to pierce the ochre-stippled chests
behind them; black thighs in motion were all but liquid with reflected light […].
(FL. 283)

Ellen loses herself completely in the performance.

The indigenous world and the European world – synergies

Ellen becomes aware of a social world that offers curious parallels with, as
well as contrasts to, the European world. She is quickly made aware of the
assumed superiority of the male, and while this offers a parallel to the world
from which she has just emerged (having been transformed at the hands of
her husband’s relatives from farm girl into the kind of lady-like wife who
suited his status and social position), there is a difference. Here, the women
still retain a functional role, in that they contribute directly to the survival of
the community through potato-picking, diving for lily roots, hunting for pos-
sums. This is apart from caring for the children and carrying the burdens of
the camping equipment as the community moves from one camp site to
another.
There are social protocols in the black world, too, and there are numerous
occasions when Ellen is reminded of some analogous ritual in the European
world. For example, she recalls the labours of her mother-in-law and others
who helped her make the transition from farm girl to lady when the women
who dress her for her dual role as both slave and goddess in this society
work on her appearance “sighing with satisfaction” at the outcome. In the
preparations for the corroboree, Ellen is seated among the group, with as
much decorum as she would have shown in attending any ceremony in her
drawing-room in Cheltenham: “To have started screaming in a drawing-
room would not have been worse than to return by the way she had come,
between the rows of correctly seated black women” (FL. 282). Carried away
by the group participation in the corroboree,
] A Fringe of Leaves 91

She was again dancing as they carried in ‘the neck! the neck!’ at harvest, and as
she danced she twitched the corner of her starched apron. (It was, in fact, her
recently renewed fringe of leaves.) (FL. 283)

Schaffer’s statement (in the passage quoted earlier) that the “women couple
indiscriminately” with the males is not correct.32 Ellen is allocated to a
particular family and the observations recorded are of the marital privileges
which are granted to the male in a polygynous society. When the Turrwan
decides to court Ellen, there is a protocol that has to be observed, she
realizes, “when they came face to face with a second group advancing upon
them as though by arrangement”:

The two parties halted. […] she could tell that her keepers and the physician-
conjurer were entering upon a contract of which she was the principal, perhaps
even the sole clause […]. The outcome of this was that this ‘Turrwan’, as the
others constantly referred to the magician, took charge of her, and she could but
presume that she had become his property. (FL. 285).

By virtue of the new affiliation, she acquires status in the community and her
new-found leisure brings with it recollections of her life as a lady at Chelten-
ham:

Her improved station relieved her of some of the drudgery. She was kept com-
pany by a handful of older ladies who would have taught her how to spin a
thread out of hair or stitch together an opossum rug had she shown any in-
clination. Instead she could now afford to feel bored […].
Incidentally she realized that most of her life at Cheltenham had been a bore
[…]. It was in consequence a relief as evening approached to join her inferiors
in the preparation of fern root. (FL. 286).

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this society is the mobility allowed
the white initiate, who moves from captive slave to nurse and finally wife-to-
be to Turrwan, the medicine-man of the clan. Most remarkable is that even
while she is a slave she is also accorded a special place as a kind of divinity.
The ‘primitive’ indigene’s capacity to hold the slave and goddess-figure in the
same gaze shows a capacity to avoid the simpler binary oppositions so char-
acteristic of colonial cultures and their attitudes to the colonized. The en-

32 Schaffer, In the Wake of First Contact, 168.

92 WRITING THE NATION ]

counter with difference triggers an impulse to awe, in the indigenous culture,

whereas in white culture it sparks repulsion and denigration.
While the eruption of violence into the drama of the two Aboriginal
women competing for the male’s attention registers with some shock – the
episode ends with the death of one of them – violence is equally a factor in
both worlds and is present in the most intimate of relationships. There is
even more shock in Jack Chance’s recounting of his crime of murdering his
faithless lover and adding to this the detail of necrophilia: “‘And Mab, Ellen.
I was never worse in love and she never give ’erself so trustful as on the last
night I spent with ’er’” (FL. 325).
As one critic remarks, violence in the black world has more to do with the
harshness of Nature.33 The extreme cruelty of the Europeans’ treatment
accorded their own kind, the convicts, has no parallel in the black society. An
underpinning of violence characterizes the white world from the opening
scenes of the novel. This has to do with the violence of colonialism as re-
flected in the reports of the atrocities committed in the remoter areas of the
settlement, in the emancipist’s account of the bodies of the murdered men at
the start of the narrative. This is reinforced by the spectacle of the treatment
of the convicts. Ellen, long before her meeting with Jack Chance, encounters
a chain gang in the earliest moments of her arrival in the land. (The scene is
resonant with echoes of Heart of Darkness and Marlow’s observation of the
long row of weary and diseased black men dragging their chains along the
dusty pathway.)

The prisoners were divided into two squads, each engaged in pushing a hand-
cart of freshly quarried stone. […]. Every face was raised to the sun, teeth bared
in sobbing mouths when the lips were not tightly clenched, skin streaming with
light and sweat. […]. She felt a pang of commiseration through the hardships
and indignities suffered during girlhood […]. At least her companions […] were
too engrossed in the past to notice the work-party of convicts before those
unfortunate human beasts were lost to sight. (FL. 83–84)

Jack Chance’s narrative of the tortures inflicted on him so affects Ellen that,
even after her return to the ‘civilized’ world, the screams of a convict being
lashed at the triangles triggers in her an hysterical reaction:

33 Veronica Brady, “A Properly Appointed Humanism: Australian Culture and the

Aborigine in Patrick White’s A Fringe of Leaves,” Westerly 2 (June 1983): 61–68.

] A Fringe of Leaves 93

“That’s the way we pass our lives. […]. In between the ’ard labour. Or ’arder
still when they strip us naked and string us up at the triangles – for the good of
our moral ’ealth.”
She flinched.
“I fell down once. I reckon I must of fainted […]. I would of said the bones
was showin’ through me hide, whether or not. Anyways, the flies got to work
on the cuts. I was turned septic. Yairs, I was a brake on the chain-gang, whether
at the mill or the stone-bustin’. […].”
She was clinging to him in horror and disgust: the smell alone, of putrefying
flesh (or rotten teeth). (FL. 309)

Perhaps the most eloquent testimony to the cruelty of white culture is Jack
Chance’s decision to bolt back into the wilderness rather than take the risk of
submitting himself to the clemency of the colonial government.

Cannibalism
White does not shrink from presenting the practice of ritual cannibalism.
This was possibly the most fear-inspiring of all the practices associated with
the ‘heathen’ tribes encountered by the Europeans. Patrick Brantlinger cites
several authorities to prove that this was something that Europeans were
more obsessed with than a practice that actually exsisted among large num-
bers of these people:

As Dorothy Hammond and Alta Jablow note, cannibalism was an important

theme in British writing about Africa before mid-century. But “in the imperial
period writers were far more addicted to tales of cannibalism than […] Africans
ever were to cannibalism […].” The more that Europeans dominated Africans,
the more “savage” Africans came to seem; cannibalism represented the nadir of
savagery, more extreme even than slavery (which of course a number of
“civilized” nations practiced through much of the nineteenth century).34

Brantlinger also points out the tales were circulated with little real documen-
tation, and often amounted to a mode of justifying the imperialist project
which would bring salvation and light to these benighted savages. Lynette
Russell writes that cannibalism was considered to be the defining charac-
teristic of the savage. Within the Eliza Fraser narrative, the possibility of can-

34 Patrick Brantlinger, “Victorians and Africans: The Genealogy of the Myth of the

Dark Continent,” 203.

94 WRITING THE NATION ]

nibalism was a constant concern. Russell quotes local authorities to bear out
her view that while the Aborigines practised a degree of ritual cannibalism,
they did not customarily consume human flesh.35 Ronald and Catherine
Berndt’s authoritative work also establishes the fact that while forms of ritual
cannibalism were practised, this needed to be differentiated from the habitual
practice of ‘unspeakable’ rites:

The Australian Aborigines are not, generally speaking, cannibals who kill other
human beings for the specific purpose of eating them. Nevertheless if the avail-
able accounts are to be relied on, burial cannibalism is (or was) fairly common
[…]. Only a small part of the flesh may be eaten by certain specified relatives.36

In an examination of 146 societies, one researcher reports:

A variety of themes appear in reports of cannibalism. The role of hunger is fre-

quently mentioned and most people believe that cannibalism may occur during
times of extreme hunger and famine. However hunger cannibalism is generally
regarded as revolting and reprehensible, the ultimate anti-social act, in some
cases punishable by death.37

Schaffer devotes an entire chapter of her book to discussing the motif of

cannibalism in the various versions of the Fraser story. Referring to the
nineteenth-century account by Curtis, she traces it as surfacing primarily as a
fear in the minds of the shipwrecked crew and the captain and one that grew
inevitably out of the stories that circulated freely at the time among sea-
men.38 Gananath Obeysekere’s research suggests that the morbid fear of
cannibalism that characterized European attitudes during this period was
traceable to three factors: it was what the public wanted to hear about; what
the explorers wanted to find; and what was most feared:

35 Lynette Russell, “ ‘ Mere trifles and faint representations’: The representations of

savage life offered by Eliza Fraser,” 56.

36 Ronald & Catherine Berndt, “Death and the Afterlife,” in Berndt, The World of the

First Australians, 467–70.

37 Peggy Reeves Sanday, Divine Hunger: Cannibalism as a Cultural System (Melbourne:

Cambridge U P , 1986): 4-5.

38 Kay Schaffer, “Cannibals: Western Imaginings of the Aboriginal Other,” in Schaffer,

In the Wake of First Contact, 106–18.

] A Fringe of Leaves 95

They found cannibalism everywhere, even in locations where it was not known
to exist […]. British assumptions that natives in the South Seas were all canni-
bals were as much a product of British behaviours and fantasies as of any histo-
rical evidence.39

It is suggested that these beliefs represented a projection of their own repres-

sed knowledge that they themselves were engaged in a project which would
result in the complete destruction of the body politic of indigenous peoples.
Kay Schaffer’s discussion of White’s use of the motif of cannibalism re-
quires some qualification:

He portrays the possibility of white cannibalism as acceptable, when imagined in

the dreams of a starving Austin Roxburgh at the time of the shipwreck and the
steward Spurgeon’s death. He also acknowledges that the practice of native
cannibalism was not uncommon, as revealed through Delancy’s reports to the
Merivales of natives killing and eating white trespassers on Aboriginal territory
at the start of the novel.40

In reality, a careful distinction is drawn between the practice of cannibalism

by blacks and the whites in this novel. The blacks are shown to practise a
form of ritual cannibalism (such as has been referred to in the studies of
anthropologists); it is the whites who are shown to indulge in a form that is
more nearly the ‘abomination of human behaviour’ as Ellen thinks of it at
the moment in the forest when she herself is caught up in committing such
an act. In this representation of the practice of cannibalism, the reader is pre-
sented with still another – and possibly the most striking – of the com-
parisons that recur between the so-called ‘savage’ world and the world of the
European.
It ends, again, not only in a questioning of where the distinction between
‘savage’ and ‘civilized’ lies but also in the intimation that the ‘savage’ world
may, in fact, be the more humane. Ellen’s complicity in the practice was an
intrusion into a ritual in which only the girl’s family should have had a role.
What she does recognize intuitively is the evidence of the parallel between
white and black in the “darker need of the hungry spirit” that these beha-
viours satisfy. Terry Goldie sees Ellen’s act as signifying the assimilation of

39 Gananath Obeysekera, “‘British Cannibals’: Contemplation of an Event in the Death

and Resurrection of James Cook, Explorer,” Critical Inquiry 18.4 (Summer 1992): 630–54.
40 Kay Schaffer, In the Wake of First Contact, 171.
96 WRITING THE NATION ]

the Aboriginal culture by the West and of the West being equally assimilated
into the New World.41 Hena Maes–Jelinek also sees the act as having sacra-
mental significance.42 The complexity of this episode is best explored later in
the discussion, where the concept of transformation is explored.
What the narrative does establish is that with the whites (and this includes
Ellen herself) cannibalism is motivated by hunger and the desire for survival
rather than the spiritual motivation that dictates the indigenes’ practice. In
her meeting with Pilcher, Ellen’s sense of guilt is quite apparent:

“[…]. Did they favour eating one another?”

Mr Pilcher swallowed. “Some of ’em was eaten.”
Mrs Roxburgh might have been thinking the mate had never looked so
loathsome.
He told her confidentially. “The blacks consider the hands are the greatest
delicacy.”
“Did you try?” Mrs Roxburgh asked.
Mr Pilcher became so agitated he rose from his chair and began patrolling
the room. “I ask you,” he said at last, “Mrs Roxburgh could you?”
“I don’t know. It would depend, I expect.”
Since she was caught in her own net, and Mr Pilcher had subsided again, she
found herself struggling to her feet. Pain in one leg, or the root of an invisible
tree, all but tripped her.
Looking up from the vantage of an easy chair the mate ventured to suggest,
“I bet you had a tough time yourself, Mrs Roxburgh – before the rescue.” (FL.
377–78)

They continue to needle each other until she ends the mutual probing with
the comment that “truth is often many-sided and difficult to see from every
angle,” and, when he agrees, suggests: “‘I hope we can accept each other’s
shortcomings, since none of us always dares to speak the truth. Then we
might remain friends’” (FL. 378).
Pilcher has earlier spoken of how the men were “‘for droring lots to de-
cide which of ‘em ’twould be’” (FL. 377) – a reference to the fact that the
men were considering cannibalism (“‘You get to hate one another when

41 Terry Goldie, “Contemporary Views of an Aboriginal Past,” World Literature Written

in English 23.2 (1984): 429–39.
42 Hena Maes–Jelinek, “Fictional Breakthrough and the Unveiling of ‘Unspeakable

Rites’ in Patrick White’s A Fringe of Leaves and Wilson Harris’ Yurakon,” Kunapipi 2.2
(1980): 33–43.
] A Fringe of Leaves 97

you’re hungry’” FL. 377). Obeysekere’s research shows that there was a tra-
dition of cannibalism among shipwrecked sailors.43 There are well-docu-
mented examples of similar episodes in records relating to the convict phase
of Australian history.44 What the narrative shows is that the act which the
European regards as the ultimate signifier of savagery, that of cannibalism, is
an act which the whites themselves practise – indeed, doing so in a manner
that underlines the bestiality of the act in comparison to the mystical purpose
prompting indigene behaviour.
There is a considerable difference here vis-à-vis the representation of the
motif of cannibalism in Conrad’s novella. When the helmsman is killed, his
body is quickly pushed overboard before it can be a temptation to the canni-
bals on board, who have been starving for several weeks. Marlow, contem-
plating what he sees as their amazing self-discipline over the past weeks, is
moved to consider whether he himself would appear “an appetising morsel.”
In Heart of Darkness, it would be inconceivable that any of the whites could
be capable of such an atrocity. In A Fringe of Leaves, instead of cannibalism
being the ultimate mark of ‘savage otherness’, there are frequent reminders
that it is a practice embedded in the cultural tradition of the whites and is
indeed enshrined in the Christian ritual of the Eucharist with its belief in the
consumption of the body and blood of Christ as a means of preserving his
grace in His followers. In White’s narrative, the thought of it can surface in
the mind – of all people – of the English gentleman Austin Roxburgh in his
half-dream of Spurgeon soon after the man dies and his body is pushed
overboard:

It stimulated his actual hunger until now dormant, and he fell to thinking how
the steward, had he not been such an unappetizing morsel, might have contri-
buted appreciably to an exhausted larder. At once Mr Roxburgh’s self-disgust
knew no bounds. (FL. 231)

In his dream later that evening, Captain Purdew appears,

who now came stepping between the heads of the sleepers, to bend and whis-
per, This is the body of Spurgeon [...]. Austin Roxburgh was not only ravenous for

43 Obeysekera, “British Cannibals: Contemplation of an Event in the Death and

Resurrection of James Cook, Explorer,” 630–54.
44 See Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore, 220–26.
98 WRITING THE NATION ]

the living flesh, but found himself anxiously licking the corners of his mouth to
prevent any overflow of precious blood. (FL. 231)

Ann Ling is of the view that White’s knowledge of Aboriginal culture,

(which a critic like Simon During dismisses far too easily as being minimal)
owes a great deal to the documents he cites as his sources for Voss:

Chisholm and Eyre, in their different ways, made it possible for White to ap-
prehend tribal religious belief, white experience of aboriginal landscape, and the
direction of colonial endeavour and aspiration, as he found them to be during
the significant decade of the eighties during which Voss is set […]. Eyre’s impor-
tance is to the aboriginal religious order which informs the latter phases of Voss
[…]. Eyre’s Journals are White’s way into a religious apprehension of the ancient
Australian landscapes of the novel […]. His Journals are remarkable for their
time, revealing fewer ethnocentric assumptions than are apparent in Chisholm’s
book of almost a century later, and in this respect they also form strong contrast
with the fiction of the period […].
Eyre encountered much that was totally new to the experience of any Euro-
pean during the course of his several expeditions, and he was not infrequently at
a loss when he attempted to draw inferences from those things which he
observed.45

Ling points out the inconsistencies in some of his conclusions, such as

Eyre’s declaration that the natives seemed to have no religious beliefs,
whereas he devotes at least three chapters to dealing with what are obviously
religious practices. She does insist that his work must have endowed White
with considerable knowledge of Aboriginal culture. (Chisholm’s accounts,
she believes, rounded out his acquaintance with the colonial society of the
period.)
The religious aspect of the indigenous world comes into focus much
earlier – and with more impact in A Fringe of Leaves than in Voss. Ellen ex-
periences her first impulse towards some lightening of spirit after the
traumas she has endured on her very first day among the Aborigines:

While dusk crept amongst them, and shadows became increasingly entwined
with tree and smoke, an elder rose and led the tribe in a kind of lament. The
prisoner concluded that the natives were at their prayers, for their wails sounded
formal rather than spontaneously emotional. She considered adding at least an

45 Ann Ling, “Voss and A Fringe of Leaves,” 33.

] A Fringe of Leaves 99

unspoken prayer of her own, but found she lacked the impulse; her soul was as
dry as her hanging breasts. (FL. 248).

She recognizes that her impulse to worship has more in common with this
world than with the orthodoxies of the Roxburghs, since from her girlhood
in the Cornish countryside, “rocks had been her altars and spring water her
sacrament” (FL. 248).
She notes that the ritual chanting is repeated the next morning and ex-
periences a further sense of ease:

[…] the lamentations of the evening before were repeated in a cold dawn.
Whether the wailing was intended to exorcise malign spirits, the captive felt that
some of her more persistent ghosts might have been laid by this now familiar
rite. (FL. 249)

Reversal of the hegemonic relationship

Even more evidently than in Voss, there is a foregrounding in A Fringe of
Leaves of the reversal of the hegemonic relationship between black and white.
Whereas in Voss the varied encounters between black and white take place
over a period of time as the power of the white men’s expedition is gradually
whittled down, the very first encounter between the two groups in A Fringe of
Leaves takes place when the party of the whites has already experienced con-
siderable suffering and privation. The first mate, Pilcher, has abandoned the
shipwrecked group, taking the only serviceable boat, and Captain Purdew is
on the verge of insanity. Grateful for what seems like an act of deliverance,
the starving group have dined off the putrefying carcass of a kangaroo and
refreshed themselves with the water from the spring when the party of
blacks appear. From their first sighting of the blacks, the group of ship-
wrecked whites fear for their lives:

The natives were armed besides, with spears, and other warlike implements, all
probably of wood; only their dark skins had the glint of ominous metal.
The two parties remained watching each other an unconscionable time
before the blacks silently melted away among the shadows. (FL. 236)

A temporary respite is afforded with nightfall, but almost all of them are now
further weakened by the pangs of diarrhoea; the vulnerability of the group is
apparent: “So they struggled on, the men for the most part barefoot, and
100 WRITING THE NATION ]

every one of them a shambles of appearance and behaviour” (FL. 238).

When the blacks return, an attack is launched, and the deaths of the captain
and Mr Roxburgh follow. The men have hardly finished burying the Captain
when the blacks return to finish off their task:

A solution was provided by the blacks’ return, the more dignified among
them striding directly towards their objective, […]. The party of ineffectual
whites was soon surrounded by the troop of blacks, all sinew, stench, and exul-
tant in their mastery […].
[…]
The blacks had begun stripping their captives garment by garment. […].
After much laughter and caracoling as they bore away their spoils into the scrub,
the blacks returned and started driving their white herd, by thwacks and prod-
ding into the dense hinterland. (FL. 241–42)

There is a considerable departure here from the events of the historical

record, where it appears that, for a while, the natives entered into discussions
with the group as they made their way along the beach. The shipwrecked
whites were later taken into the clan and forced to contribute to the work of
foraging for survival. The captain was speared from impatience at his
inability to perform these allotted tasks adequately due to his weakened state,
rather than deliberately murdered.46 Another crew member also died from
wounds inflicted for similar reasons. Obviously, to adhere to this sequence
of events would have materially affected the dramatic force of the encounter
and certainly eroded the sense of black power that is conveyed in the
novelist’s rendering of the sequence of events.
It is the European who is now reduced to the level of the subhuman.
Later, Ellen will come upon the charred remains of some of the crew. She
herself now becomes the focus of the black women’s attention. Beginning
with throwing sand at her, they strip her of her clothing and lead her back to
the camp, where even the children “pinch and jab and poke at her.” The
reader is presented with the shocking and unprecedented spectacle of an
English lady being reduced to the condition of the allotted slave of the black
women. She is first assigned the task of caring for the sick child and is
gradually allotted other tasks:

46 See Michael Alexander, Mrs. Fraser on the Fatal Shore, 39–46.

] A Fringe of Leaves 101

The women had little but scowls and pouts for the recalcitrant slave, whom they
loaded with the heaviest sheets of bark and thickest swatches of leafy thatching.
However capricious the present manoeuvre she carried her loads willingly
enough. (FL. 257)

She is recruited to help with the transport of the great haul of fish. She is
revolted by the sight of the dying fish but is obliged to cooperate:

She was in fact brought halfway back to her senses by the full ‘dillis’ with
which her masters were loading her. […]. Arrived at the camp, she dumped her
load and was immediately sent back for more. (FL. 258–59)

She is even driven with a fire-stick held to her buttocks to compel obedience
in climbing trees to search for possum. The language of the text constantly
refers to her “masters” and to Ellen as a “slave,” underlining the depths to
which the English lady has fallen. In her hunger, she fights off the native
dogs for the scraps of food she can salvage. The struggle for existence be-
comes paramount.

More beneficent aspect of black dominance

The idea of the ‘worthless’ alterity of the Other (JanMohamed’s phrase) is
exorcised by the evidence of so much that Ellen and Jack Chance (the
convict who has survived with the blacks and, indeed, chooses to return to
them) have been taught about methods of survival in the wilderness. This is
where the reversal of white hegemony shows its most beneficent aspect. As
in Voss, white survival in this black world requires tutorship by the indigene
in the basic arts of survival. Since she is allowed to live within the com-
munity, Ellen learns from them quickly:

In imitation of the man she had watched climb the tree farther back, she
looped the vine and felt for a hold with the soles of her feet, and began this
fearful climb. […] she found herself close enough to the bough to thrust her
arm inside the hollow and feel around for animal fur, […]. She dug in her own
desperate claws, and hauled, […]. (FL. 263–64)

Even the children teach her, leading her back to the tribe when she loses her
way or showing her where she can find the sweetest water. The women of
the tribe teach her the art of “‘potato’-sticking”: in the course of wandering
from patch to patch, she realizes she is beginning to develop competence in
102 WRITING THE NATION ]

this skill (FL. 253). She dives for lily roots just like the lubras she has ob-
served.

Transformation
Even as Voss’s foreignness, his German background and eccentric beha-
viour, set him apart from British colonial society, Ellen Roxburgh’s origins as
a farm girl from Cornwall distance her from the polite snobbery of Sydney
society. Miss Scrimshaw, who has pretensions to aristocratic connections in
Britain, comments that Cornwall is “‘a remote country […]. Of dark people’”
(FL. 15) and continues, “‘I cannot remember ever having been on intimate
terms with any individual of Cornish blood. All my own family were fair’”
(FL. 15). As a British ‘savage’, it is suggested, Ellen is closer to the Australian
indigene than to the British colonial aristocracy.
The preparation for her immersion in the black world and transformation
into the Aborigine has started long before Ellen actually arrives in Australia.
In a sense, it begins in Ellen’s girlhood, and her intuitive immersion of
herself in the pool at Hyas is a way of calming the deep spiritual unrest she
experienced in her girlhood. It is an incident that highlights her aspect as an
instinctual being: “Rocks had been her altars and spring water her sacrament
[…]” (FL. 248). While, for a time, after marriage, she is removed into the
world of the aristocracy, it is her groundedness in this rustic world that
enables her to survive in the world of the indigene.
Among the links she seems to share with the indigene (like Voss before
her) is a disregard for books and writing. She has little affinity with the world
of literature and cannot understand her husband’s decision to return to look
for his Virgil before the abandonment of the ship:

[…] in spite of a respect for books instilled by her husband and mother-in-law,
they were another kind of furniture, but unlike tables, chairs and so forth, dis-
pensable.
[…]
“Oh, no, no! There’s no need to go back. Not for a book!” Whatever the
eventual outcome, she had said it; in the present, however, the languid tones of
female despair did not serve to restrain her husband […]. (FL. 175)

She is unable to join in the prayerful chanting of the Aborigines, but she
sings for Jack Chance as she makes her way through the bush with him. He,
] A Fringe of Leaves 103

in turn, with the musicality of his birdcalls, evinces an orality that links him
with the indigenous world.

Affinity with the landscape

Almost immediately after Ellen’s arrival in Hobart Town, the foreign place
begins to be conflated with home:

The scent of the cow’s breath, the thudding of her hooves, and the plop of fall-
ing dung, filled Ellen with an immeasurable homesickness. […] she might have
been driving Gluyas’s cart to market. (FL. 83)

When “a drizzle started blowing in their faces,” she declares (while her deli-
cate husband Austin coughs), “‘I am used to it’” (FL. 85). While Austin
chooses to lose himself in the Virgilian landscape of his books, Ellen fre-
quently walks and rides into the countryside; often deliberately choosing the
less frequented scene to the more orderly and settled. At Dulcet, her sensual
response to her surroundings is suggestive of a sexual encounter:

Fronds of giant ferns caressed her, and she in turn caressed the brown fur
which clothed their formal crooks.
She was so entranced she sat down in a small clearing […]. Removing the
superfluous bonnet and loosening her matted hair, she felt only remotely related
to Ellen Roxburgh, or even Ellen Gluyas […].
The delicious cool, the only half-repellent smell of rotting vegetation […] all
were combining to drug her […]. (FL. 92)

Later, she seems materially consoled by the beauty of the landscape, even in
the most traumatic moments following her husband’s death and her own en-
slavement:

Round her the blacks were proceeding with their various duties beneath a
splendid sky, beside a lake the colour of raw cobalt, shot with bronze. Despite
her misery and the child in her arms Mrs. Roxburgh could not remain unmoved
by the natural beauty surrounding her. (FL. 247)

After all her extended suffering, in making her way through the wilderness
with the convict, she seems to recognize the significance of the progress she
has made through her feelings for the landscape:
104 WRITING THE NATION ]

She would have continued lying on the ground and perhaps become her true
self: once the flesh melts, and the skeleton inside it is blessed with its final
articulate white, amongst the stones, beneath the hard sky, in this country to
which it can at last belong. (FL. 313)

Physical transformation
More remarkably even than in the case of Voss, Ellen is almost immediate-
ly physically transformed and made to resemble the blacks. She is stripped
of her clothing, her skin is blackened, and finally her hair is chopped away:
“she had become a stubbled fright such as those around her, or even
worse” (FL. 251).
Unlike Conrad’s conviction that the white woman must be preserved
from the harshness of reality (discussed in the previous chapter), here the
fact of her womanhood is made to contribute, rather, to an underlining of
the “common humanity” shared by black and white. Ellen is quickly induc-
ted into membership of the black community.
Ellen’s body, the women note, still bears the signs of recent childbirth, so
that the native women force her to care for a sickly infant. Although she is
nauseated by the child, she later shares in the mourning of the women, who
refuse to allow the pseudo-physician stir up anger against her:

For the first time since the meeting on the beach, the captive and her masters,
especially the women, were united in a common humanity.
They allowed her to accompany the funeral procession, trapesing into the
forest until they found a hollow log in which to shove the body. (FL. 261)

It is her woman’s intuition that alerts her to the drama being played out be-
tween the two women competing for the man’s attention, which later ends in
the death of the young girl. She is also involved in the female rituals which
turn the slave into a goddess-figure, reminding her of the rituals to which she
had been subjected as a Cornish farm girl being transformed into an English
lady. She is pictured climbing trees for possums and diving for lily roots;
contributing to the daily search for food. She is allotted a role in the com-
munity by being given responsibility for the children:

The black children laughed to hear her. They were growing to love their nurse,
and initiated her into their games, one in particular which resembled cat’s-cradle,
[...]. she won her children’s admiration by her ability to disentangle them. She
] A Fringe of Leaves 105

indulged their every caprice, and received their hugs and their tantrums with an
equanimity which approaching departure made it easier to maintain. (FL. 276)

Seated among the women, she participates fully in the events of the corro-
boree:

The rows of women swayed in time with darkness, slapping their thighs […].
Ellen Gluyas swayed with them, although she would rather have joined the
men, the better to celebrate what she was re- living. She was again dancing as
they carried in ‘the neck!’ at harvest […].
One of her neighbours looked at her askance […].
[…]
Dust rising made the captive sneeze. But she bowed her head and swayed in
time. She slapped and moaned, and was carried away. (FL 283)

She is momentarily checked by “the sudden vision of Mr. Roxburgh” (FL.

283), but this is not enough to prevent her from resuming her participation
in the group frenzy:

She clapped and thumped and moaned, and bowed her head until it hung
between her thighs. It inspired her neighbours to increased frenzy.
[…]
When at last she sat up, her eyes were closed, her lips parted to receive – the
burnt sacrifice? the bread and wine? (FL. 283–84)

This occasion really marks the apotheosis of her progress, as she herself ex-
plains to the Commandant, in response to his question:

“Did you take part in their corroboree?”

[…]. “Oh yes, I joined in, because I was one of them.” (FL 364)

In the later stages of her captivity, she seems destined to become the wife
of an eminent man in the community, the Turrwan. Shortly after – during
her passage through the forest with the convict – when he comes upon her
in the water diving for lily roots, Jack Chance articulates the extent of her
transformation: “He squatted at the water’s edge beside her heap of lily-
roots. ‘When I rescued a lady,’ he shouted, ‘I didn’t bargain for a lubra’”
(FL. 317).
There are notable signs of the community’s gradual acceptance of her:
106 WRITING THE NATION ]

They would give their slave the honey-rag to suck when everyone else was
satisfied and only a faint sweetness remained in the dirty fibre object. None the
less, as she dwelt on memories of more delicate pleasures evoked by sucking the
honey-rag, she might have swallowed it down had its owner not snatched it
back. (FL. 266)

The sharing of food is a universally recognized sign of human bonding, and

Ellen’s affinity with the indigene is underlined repeatedly through this motif.
She has traversed a long distance from the English lady nibbling macaroons
with little appetite in her English manor:

Now reduced to an animal condition she could at least truthfully confess that
ecstasy had flickered up from the pit of her stomach provoked by a fragment of
snakeflesh. (FL. 266)

Ellen’s participation in the ritual of cannibalism has been interpreted by

critics as marking a kind of apotheosis, a climactic point of progression to a
state of indigeneity. There is considerable ambivalence in the representation
of this act, suggesting that it does not admit of so clear-cut an interpretation.
Ellen herself does seem aware of the ritual significance it has for the Abori-
ginal participants:

All appeared and sounded languid as a result of their night’s activities; their faces
when turned towards the intruder wore expressions which were resentful and at
the same time curiously mystical. She realized she had blundered upon the per-
formance of rites she was not intended to witness. There was no immediate
indication of what these were; most likely the ceremony was over, for she
sensed something akin to the atmosphere surrounding communicants coming
out of church looking bland and forgiven after the early service.
The morning air, the moisture dripping from frond and leaf disposed
Ellen Roxburgh, naked and battered though she was, to share with these in-
nocent savages an unexpectedly spiritual experience, when she caught sight,
to one side of the dying fire, of an object not unlike a leather mat spread upon
the grass. (FL. 271)

She herself, however, has no right to participate in the burial rites, from
which even other members of the tribe are excluded. It is only members of
the family who participate; it is this that invests the act with sacramental
significance. Ellen’s act is a deliberate act of transgression. She is “punched
in the chest” by some of the group in order to prevent her from following
the family. In the description of the moment in the forest, White’s evocative
] A Fringe of Leaves 107

prose is instrumental in suggesting the grace of a sacramental experience, but

it is one in which Ellen herself is actually an intruder.
Indeed, Ellen feels guilt right at the very moment of her participation in
this particular act. Her act is, like that of the other whites in the novel who
have eaten of human flesh in order simply to assuage hunger, “an abomi-
nation of human behaviour.” She is made conscious of her ‘intrusion’ and
the anger of the family. Her emotions are a mix of amazement, disgust, pity,
and fear, when she catches sight of the thigh-bone that has fallen out of the
dilli. Her initial impulse, to kick it away in disgust, is overtaken by other
actions:

Her stiffened body and almost audibly twangling nerves were warning her
against what she was about to do, what she was, in fact, already doing. She had
raised the bone, and was tearing at it with her teeth, spasmodically chewing,
swallowing by great gulps which her throat threatened to return. But did not.
She flung the bone away after only it was cleaned […]. She was less disgusted in
retrospect by what she had done, than awed by the fact that she had been
moved to do it. (FL. 272)

But the revulsion is equally present:

But there remained what amounted to an abomination of human behaviour, a

headache, and the first signs of indigestion. In the light of Christian morality she
must never think of the incident again. (FL. 272)

Ellen’s action here is motivated by hunger; she is aware dimly of the ritual
significance it has for the blacks, but she seems equally aware that it is, for
her, an act of transgression. At different times during her sojourn in the
wilds, this memory surfaces with an attendant sense of guilt: during her time
with Jack Chance when she finds herself on the verge of questioning
whether he had ever tasted human flesh, and again in the interview with Pil-
cher, where their guilt seems mutually acknowledged.

Perception of the indigene

The colonialist text inscribes the otherness of the indigene as a necessary
mode of self-exoneration. Marlow perceives the Africans, whether in the
various stages of exhaustion and death or gibbering threateningly from the
river bank, as savage and subhuman. The recurring terms ‘savage’, ‘cannibal’,
108 WRITING THE NATION ]

‘devil’ construct the African as a demonic being.47 The ugliness of the older
women, in particular, made so much of in Curtis’s account of Eliza’s reac-
tions to the people, stamps that narrative as indelibly a colonialist document.
Ellen’s impressions record the variety of a human community: she perceives
the “noble forms,” even the “handsome” appearance of the men, notwith-
standing the disfigurement of a bone stuck through the cartilage of the nose:

Some of the men, when she came across them face to face, were wearing slen-
der bones stuck through the cartilage separating the nostrils. The bones made
them look especially fierce, but there was no reason why their fierceness or
splendour should impress her. They were none the less superb, as their women
did not fail to recognize […]. (FL. 280)

She remembers the young girl as she recalls her in life, “her breasts so youth-
ful and shapely […] as on the day she rose laughing and spangled from
beneath the quilt of water-lily pads” (FL. 269); she reacts with marked
tenderness to the children given into her charge.
Schaffer’s discussion of White’s novel seems to miss some of the subtle-
ties of this text in regard to its construction of the indigenous world:

As individuals, they are anonymous, a grovelling crowd of savages […] animal-

istic, violent and physical. They utter horrid shrieks […] gibberish acompanied
by overtly hostile gestures […] remain a shadowy enigma […] subject Ellen to
multiple humiliations, punching and prodding […] poking her with sticks and
firebrands, smearing her body with charcoal […] the women couple indiscrimi-
nately […] in their ‘stinking’ huts […] ‘wretched’, ‘slomacky from bearing
children’, ‘hags […] hideously ugly’.48

What first needs to be noted is that the early scenes are being recorded
through the terrified consciousness of a traumatized white woman whose
observations of the wholly alien scene register her fear and repulsion. The
“multiple humiliations” are again part of the first examination she was sub-
jected to when the women approach her and try to determine what duties
might be assigned her. The important fact is that the group does not remain
anonymous, faceless, barely human. They are far more differentiated than are
the natives in Heart of Darkness. These latter are constructed in terms of

47Flemming Brahms, “Entering Our Own Ignorance: Subject–Object Relations in Com-

monwealth Literature,” World Literature Written in English 21.2 (Summer 1982): 233–34.
48 Kay Schaffer, In the Wake of First Contact, 168.
] A Fringe of Leaves 109

disembodied hands clapping, feet stamping in the inchoate gloom through

which they are barely discernible.
From the start, Ellen is aware of the different groups, the older women,
the women of child-bearing age, men in the prime of manhood, the children.
From among all of these groups, individuals emerge: first, the old woman
who examines Ellen and from whom she senses an emanation of some sym-
pathy for her plight, and the mother of the child and the family she is allo-
cated to. Later there is the woman who smiles across at her when she is
successful at potato-sticking, besides the two women who become embroiled
in a love triangle ending with the death of one of them. She had noticed the
young girl earlier, and sees her even in death as still beautiful. Later, at the
corroboree, she recognizes the girl’s grandmother “in the gristly neck of one
seated in the row ahead”:

an old woman made conspicuous by red markings. Mrs Roxburgh thought to

recognize the grandmother of the girl who had been killed for love. […] the
woman had blossomed red in mourning for her grand-daughter. (FL. 284)

She has particularly noted the “the big black” who becomes involved in the
little drama of the love triangle with the two women. He is the same man
who applies the firebrand to her buttocks as a persuasive strategy to compel
her to climb the tree. Vignettes of Ellen with the children are strewn
throughout her sojourn among these people: the child who shows her the
sweet water hidden under furze; the two children who find her when she is
lost; the little one whose snot she wipes away; the children who play cat’s
cradle with her. The picture of the ‘slave-nurse’ surrounded by the children
who are her special charge is wholly benign in its details:

That she did not feel colder was due to the warm bodies of the children heaped
around her, their skins still smooth and bright, unblemished by the life that was
preparing for them. From time to time she touched a head or stroked a cheek to
allay the apprehension which had rendered her charges unusually silent. She
could have eaten them on such a morning […]. (FL. 276)

The construction of the indigene avoids the dehumanization of such colo-

nialist narratives as Conrad’s, traceable also in so many other re-tellings of
the Fraser story:

Within the Eliza Fraser narratives the silence of the Aboriginal people was
coupled with anonymity, by which I mean there was a general failure to indivi-
110 WRITING THE NATION ]

dualize the group members […]. The general failure to individualize the Badtjala
continued into the post-contact and mission periods […]. The general reticence
to record the individuality of the Fraser Island Aborigines fostered the percep-
tion that the indigenes were an undifferentiated mass […]. Such a representa-
tional technique is familiar to readers of Edward Said’s critique of Orientalism.
Said argues that it is the failure to record individuality and variations within the
Orientalist discourse that assures the native is perceived as a primitive and
singular Other.49

The convict – as white indigene

When the convict Jack Chance leaps onstage, he is already a full-fledged in-
digene:

One giant of a fellow, a natural clown by any standards, would twirl, and
leap in the air slapping his heels, and entertain those within earshot of his
patter. She could tell that he was respected and envied. What most distin-
guished him from his companions was an axe, or hatchet, which he wore in
his woven belt. (FL. 279)

He shows in his very first appearance that he has mastered the language and
absorbed the culture of the people, to the extent that he is admired as one of
their finest dancers. The massed crowd of natives greet him with applause:

She wondered how he had come by his hatchet. It was much coveted by the
other blacks, who would stroke it, and some of them would attempt to prise it
away from the owner.
But the giant was equal to their cunning. He would slap down pilfering
hands, and leap expertly out of reach, keeping up the gibberish which made
others laugh. (FL. 279)

Shortly after, when she encounters him at close quarters, she notes: “The
expanse of the man’s back was covered with what appeared to be a pattern-
less welter of healed wounds” (FL. 279). She recognizes him then as “a mis-
creant,” a runaway convict. It seems he can only begin to speak his native
language again with considerable effort and is from the beginning distrustful

49 Lynette Russell, “ ‘ Mere trifles and faint representations’: The representations of

savage life offered by Eliza Fraser,” 56.

] A Fringe of Leaves 111

of any promise of mercy: “‘Men is unnatural and unjust’” (FL. 281) is his
verdict on the colonial society from which he is a fugitive.
The term ‘white blackfella’ (also ‘wild white man’) which was in circu-
lation at the time attests to the fact that there was already a perception in the
community of this bonding between convict and indigene. Robert Hughes
makes the comment that the relationship between them was quite complex,
with the convict envious of the ‘freedom’ of the indigene and what seemed
like favoured status while the Aborigines realized that these men were out-
casts of the white society:

Every underdog needs a dog below him so he can feel canine. That, in the con-
vict’s eyes, was all the Aborigines were good for. The cruelty of the authorities
towards whites was stored up as blind resentment in the convict lumpenproletariat
and discharged […] upon the blacks.
For their part, the Aborigines seem to have despised the convicts, whom
they saw labouring under conditions which their own pride would never have
accepted […].50

Nevertheless, stories of these ‘white blackfellas’ are too numerous to ignore.

Hughes himself recounts incidents where white men had survived with the
help of Aborigines:

The first human beings Oxley and his men encountered, to their stupefaction,
were two naked, scarred and sunburnt white men, who had been wrecked on
the coast a year and a half before and were in “healthy state and plump con-
dition,” thanks to the local Aborigines, who had adopted them.51

He mentions in some detail the case of the convict John Graham (the same
man who is mentioned in the official report as having assisted in the rescue
of Eliza Fraser). In the same account, he refers to the famous case of
William Buckley, another convict who had also survived amongst Aborigines
for several years.52

If a runaway convict or shipwrecked white were recognized as the spirit of some

departed family member by one of the tribe he would be taken into the tribe
and given full rights of participation. This was the experience of the convict

50 Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore, 279.

51 Hughes, The Fatal Shore, 441.
52 The Fatal Shore, 453.
112 WRITING THE NATION ]

John Graham who was claimed by an Aboriginal woman to be her returned

husband, Moilow, and lived amongst the Aborigines from 1827–1833.53

Evans and Walker mention numerous such cases just in the area of Fraser
Island: Samuel Derrington, who absconded in 1827; James Davis, in March
1829; John Fahey, who lived among the Aborigines for twelve years before
being recaptured. David Bracefell is another who spent several periods
among the Aborigines.54 He is the other convict who is mentioned as having
been involved in the rescue of Eliza Fraser, though his role was never men-
tioned in any of the official records.
Schaffer also notes that Curtis’s narrative makes mention of two runaway
convicts, Tursi and Tallboy, both named in seaman Darge’s story of the
Fraser shipwreck. Curtis reported that the two convicts lived an “indolent
existence in the bush, where they would be content to live and die rather
than face the harsh brutalities of the penal system.”55 Graham’s account as
chronicled by Robert Gibbings shows the degree of familiarity and accep-
tance that he had achieved with the Aborigines. When he returns to the tribe
in order to glean knowledge of where Mrs Fraser was held, he is remem-
bered by them and his past good reputation amongst them stands him in
good stead. Knowing their ways enables him to barter with them and cajole
them. His enormous bush skills are amply attested in his own account of his
role in the rescue.
It is in this mastery of bush skills that Jack (like Judd before him in Voss)
shows his kinship with the Aborigine. During their travel through the bush,
at their very first halt, he quickly builds a shelter, “low and shapeless, scarcely
distinguishable from the living bushes […]. That he was stark naked apart
from the belt and a few remnants of feathers in his hair, did not, or rather,
must not, disturb her” (FL. 289). During the time she spends with him, for
the first time since the shipwreck she is freed from the ever-present gnaw-
ings of hunger, as he seems able to provide for their needs with little effort,
whether securing a brace of pigeons, spearing an emu, or trapping a goanna.
Physically, he has all the appearance of an Aborigine, even to the ‘stench’
noted in the appearance of the Aborigines on their reappearance after attack-
ing the shipwrecked party: “all sinew, stench, and exultant in their mastery”

53 Robert Gibbings, John Graham (Convict) 1824 (London: Faber & Faber, 1937): 75–76.
54 Raymond Evans & Jan Walker, “These Strangers, Where are They Going?,” 43.
55 Kay Schaffer, In the Wake of Contact, 102.
] A Fringe of Leaves 113

(FL. 242). When he crawls into the shelter, “bringing with him, together with
the now familiar stench, a warmth which combined with her own as a com-
fort against the hostile night” (FL. 295). Ellen’s continuing transformation
into an indigene is underlined by the resemblances she herself becomes con-
scious of between herself and the convict, the white indigene: “She sighed,
and snorted, and thought how foolish she must look, naked and filthy,
beside the naked filthy man” (FL. 290). Nakedness is the natural state of the
Aborigine. (The convict Graham has to shed his clothes when he goes
among them, in order to secure acceptance.). When he makes love,

He began to handle her as though she had been a wheelbarrow, or black

woman, for she had seen the head of her adoptive family take possession of his
wives after such a fashion. (FL. 298)
She allowed him to free her of the girdle of vines, her fringe of shed or withered
leaves, which had been until now the only disguise for her nakedness. (FL. 299)

The ‘clothing’ and the wedding ring which has marked her as belonging to
the ‘civilized’ world and to which she has clung all through her travails in the
camp are shed, albeit only temporarily. Ellen will never achieve the state of
indigeneity that is already the state of the convict. The very next morning she
has ‘re-clothed’ herself with fresh vines and, even though she is no longer
among the blacks, decides to knot her ring among them. She notes “his
sullen glance at her renewed girdle” (FL. 301), as though realizing what it
signified; it could be the reason he does not touch her for the next few days.
Right through the journey through the wilds the two are presented as
Aborigines. For his part, he remains naked:

He was carrying the spear and waddy, and the cumbrous net retained from his
life with the aborigines, which it would have been improvident to abandon. He
had made no attempt to cover his nakedness in any way since losing the strip of
bark cloth. His sole article of clothing was the belt from which hung that relic of
a white past, the salvaged hatchet. (FL. 301)

One night they are pictured lying on the bare earth, when he had not even
bothered to build a low shelter, his fingers are entwined in hers:

They lay thus, in passive communion, and snoozed, and throbbed, and groaned,
and tossed (he yelped once) under a sifting of trees, and ants crawling all over
their all-but-unfeeling flesh. (FL. 313)
114 WRITING THE NATION ]

He picks up his spear and leaves their ‘camp’ in search of food, while she
makes a fire “as she remembered seeing the black women, using sticks and
fibre.”

When he reappeared […] he had speared one of the giant birds of wooden
gait and humane demeanour. So a feast was promised.
Preparing for it they did not speak, but communicated by grunts and sniffs;
[…]. While plucking the bird she did more than once tear away strips of bluish
skin, the feathers still rooted in them. (FL. 314)

On another day, she encounters the “sheet of water strewn with lilies,” and
recalls ‘knowledge acquired during her enslavement by the blacks’. So “she
plunged in and began diving, groping for the roots as she had seen the native
women […] she was determined to make a contribution by bringing him a
meal of lily-roots.” What follows is probably the most idyllic scene in the
entire narrative, where the two of them are represented as a pair of Abori-
ginal lovers in an Australian Eden:

This was how he found her, breathless, goggle-eyed and half-blinded as she
surfaced, hair plastered, shoulders gleaming and rustling with water.
He squatted at the water’s edge beside her heap of lily-roots. […].
After which he slipped in and was wading towards her as she retreated. […]
bumping, laughing, falling and rising, swallowing mouthfuls of the muddy water.
(FL. 316–17)

When, in response to his request, Ellen sings, and then he fills the air with
birdcalls, they may be regarded as displaying that characteristic orality which
Goldie identifies as one of the attributes of indigenous people, or at least one
of the ‘commodities’ Western writers identify with them.56
From what Chance then tells Ellen of his sufferings at the hands of brutal
administrators, it is evident that his experience has permanently estranged
him from his English heritage. He does not leave out the “little luxuries,” but
these only underline the sense of a living nightmare:

That’s the way we pass our lives – a mouthful o’ pumpkin loaf, a quick draw
or chew at the crow-minder’s bacca […]. In between the ’ard labour. Or ’arder
still when they strip us naked and string us up at the triangles – for the good of
our moral ’ealth. (FL 309)

56 Terry Goldie, Fear and Temptation.

] A Fringe of Leaves 115

When Ellen attempts to arouse his sympathy for her predicament, he will not
be drawn; in response to her plaint that her husband had been “cruelly
murdered,” he replies: “‘I heard tell […] among the blacks. […] They was
provoked though, by whites.’ So she did not know how she stood” (FL.
292). Suspicious of her increasing coldness as they near the settlement, he
gives voice to his ingrained fear and distrust of the white world he has aban-
doned for so long:

[…] some demon had taken possession of him.

“Ah, Ellen, I can hear ‘em settin up the triangles – in the gateway to the
barracks! They’ll be waitin’ for me!”
Immediately after, he turned, and went loping back into the bush, the
strength restored to his skeleton. (FL. 332)

It is a resolve that reflects his choice of allegiances – the indigenous world

has proved to be for him the nurturing ‘home’ that England or the trans-
planted colonial society could never be.

Outcome
Ellen’s final discovery resembles that of Marlow in Heart of Darkness, the
moral darkness that is as present in the heart of ‘civilized’ man as in that of
the ‘savage’. Yet, unlike in the Conrad text, the line between savage and civi-
lized is interrogated with much more rigour in A Fringe of Leaves. In Heart of
Darkness, Kurtz’s degeneration is represented as an aberration on the part of
the white man; the blacks are naturally depraved. In White’s novel, Ellen, an
English lady, has found it possible to descend to the ultimate act of depravity
by consuming human flesh, experiencing fulfilment in making love with a
convict murderer, discovering that she could survive among the blacks – ac-
knowledging so much in their world as resembling her own and recognizing
that the white world could be guilty of the worst excesses of cruelty to its
own kind. Ellen’s passionate, sensual nature, which has engendered deep
feelings of guilt in her, is allowed to unfold in the Aboriginal landscape
during the protracted period in the civilized company of her convict–
indigene lover Jack Chance; there is a sense in her of physical and spiritual
healing.
In her sojourn among the Aborigines, Ellen gains insight into her own
psyche and to the complexities of understanding that, when shorn of the
trappings of civilization, the commonalities between the black and white
116 WRITING THE NATION ]

world are more than what the white world will or can acknowledge. The
manichaean allegory is an artificial construct of orientalist discourse.57 Her
mystical experience enables her to achieve the kind of spiritual equilibrium
that has eluded her since girlhood, through the realization that “God is
love”; as with Voss, the journey to spiritual wholeness and to nationality be-
come synonymous. At the end of the narrative, Mrs Roxburgh is poised to
return – not to England, but to Sydney, and it is strongly suggested that she
will remain in Australia as the wife of the substantial Mr Jevons. Her various
incarnations from farm girl through troubled English lady to white lubra to
new Australian (and regenerated female spirit) seem complete.
Jim Davidson’s view of the potential of the Fraser myth has been arti-
culated as follows:

Here the Fraser myth as it is developing is important for three reasons. First, it
involves acceptance of the land (together with a greater ease in it). As a corollary
of that it encourages second an acceptance by whites of Aboriginal people (and
hopefully the reverse). These in turn entail not repatriation for us, but reparation
for them. In short Australia is in need of a reconciliation myth as much as South
Africa (more now) and Eliza Fraser seems best placed to provide it.58

Patrick White’s version of the Fraser story seems designed to provide just
such a myth of reconciliation, and possibilities for the growth towards
nationhood.

]^

57 Abdul JanMohamed, “The Economy of Manichean Allegory: The Function of Racial

Difference in Colonialist Literature,” Critical Inquiry 12.1 (1985): 59–87.
58 Jim Davidson, “The Fatal Shore: The Mythologization of Mrs. Fraser,” 123.
4 Riders in the Chariot

“a drunken bastard of a useless black” (RC. 394)

T
HE NOVEL Riders in the Chariot presents four intertwining narra-
tives of four individuals who are each subjected to experiences of
rejection and marginalization throughout their lives. Three of them
are white: the English migrant, Mrs Godbold; the descendant of the Austra-
lian squattocracy Miss Hare; the German ‘reffo’ Himmelfarb; and then there
is the part-Aboriginal Alf Dubbo. The section of the narrative that centres
on Dubbo can be read as in the preceding chapters focusing on Voss and A
Fringe of Leaves, as presenting a radical revisioning of aspects of Conrad’s
Heart of Darkness, hence an interrogation of the orientalist perceptions of the
Aboriginal figure embedded in Australian culture. In Dubbo’s section of the
narrative, however, the protagonist is a black man who remains a solitary
figure in his blackness. He is linked with the three other white figures
through the experience of being ostracized by the larger community, but his
tragic experiences stem simply from the fact of his blackness. The very lone-
liness of this black figure is itself a comment on the destructiveness of the
impact of white colonialism. He is adrift in a world which, since it has been
completely taken over by the whites, is essentially a white world.
Unlike the white man in Conrad’s novella – making his way endowed with
superior weaponry and the products of a technologically advanced society
and simply the fact of his whiteness in a black world in which he is conscious
of his superiority – this black man is weighed down with all the inevitable
disadvantages of his blackness. The Berndts make a point of the fact that no
Aboriginal is actually black:
118 WRITING THE NATION ]

Simple contrasts between ‘Black’ and ‘White’ are becoming increasingly out-
moded and irrelevant in this present-day world in spite of numerous examples
to the contrary. Such catchwords point to supposed physical characteristics and
say little about mental ability and cultural attainment in northern coastal regions
[…]. What does make good sense anthropologically, as it should to Aborigines,
is being uniquely Aboriginal in the sense of their own identity and their cultural
heritage, not being submerged among other dark-skinned people who have
suffered through a colonial experience.1

The colloquial term ‘blackfella’ applied to the Aborigine indicates that no dis-
tinction was made in the popular mind, and certainly not in the Australia of
the 1940s in which the narrative is set. The narratorial voice itself frequently
refers to the “blackfellow”: i.e. Alf Dubbo. Frantz Fanon has recorded what
the burden of blackness can be like from his personal experience when he
recounts the frightened reaction of a white child on catching sight of him, a
black man, in a street.2 Dubbo is only part-Aboriginal, but he feels the full
burden of blackness. The incident is closely paralleled in Mudrooroo’s novel
Wildcat Screaming (1992), the sequel to Wild Cat Falling (1965), regarded as the
first novel written by a person claiming to be of Aboriginal descent. It also
centres on the growth to maturity of a part-Aboriginal boy in Australia in the
1960s, a time not too far removed from that in which the events of White’s
novel are set. The young part-Aboriginal boy’s anger at the prejudice of a
white society is expressed, too, through the description of a similar act of un-
provoked, intuitive rejection by a white child:

And then this kid, this tiny kid with mum in tow […] all anxious loving eyes, but
not for me, comes outa this nice neat home […]. And they come onto this nice
clean pavement, littered only with this slinking black cat, who has no business
there except to raid their neat rubbish bins […].
The kid catches her distaste, […] and picks up a pebble and with all the
viciousness that kids are capable of, flings it at me. It hits me on the right leg,
shinbone, and I looked down at the instantly formed scar, […] and I stare at
that kid with murder in my eye, and snarl: […], and the white lady, the mum
gets all hot and bothered […]. “He’s only a child,” she says […]. Another stone

1 Ronald M. Berndt & Catherine H. Berndt, The World of the First Australians, 529.
2 Frantz Fanon, “The Fact of Blackness,” in Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 110–13.
For the full quotation, see above, “Introduction.”
] Riders in the Chariot 119

lands on my back and I scoot away. The lady laughs and says: “You aren’t no
child, you’re just an animal and should be locked up...”3

The incident resurfaces in his memory again at the end of the paragraph
which recounts his being put away in prison, when the thought that the
woman has got her wish crosses his mind. He re-lives the dream; this time
the child is a girl, and there is only a slight variation in the mother’s con-
temptuous dismissal:

I look across at that little bitch with hate in my eyes and snarl […].
[…] the white lady, the mother gets all upset and protests: “She’s just a
child.” I reply, “So am I lady and I’m going to get that little cunt” […] and the
white lady smiles and says: “You’re just an animal and the R S P C A should come
and put you down.”
I come outa my day dream and mutter, “Well, lady, satisfied, now I’ve been
put down?”4

The blackness of the black man confers on him an unalterable alterity in a

land once his own home but now one that is dominated by the European. It
is the first element that is noted about him in any human encounter in a
world which now indubitably belongs to the white man. The extent of Dub-
bo’s blackness can, it seems, be quantified, but it makes little difference to
the reception given him in a white world. Alf’s first dialogue with Mrs Spice
runs as follows:

“You a quarter-caste?” she asked.

“No,” he said, “Half. I think.”
“You could get into trouble,” she said, almost eagerly.5

Alf is only part-Aboriginal and was adopted in boyhood into the family of
the Reverend Timothy Calderon. Nevertheless, he bears the burden of the
Aboriginal heritage. Mudrooroo’s comment, quoted in Mishra and Hodge,
that Alf Dubbo “is not a bloody Aborigine!” could be answered by quoting

3 Mudrooroo, Wildcat Screaming (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1992): 3, 4. The contro-
versy surrounding Mudrooroo’s ethnicity need not compromise the broad social implica-
tions of his fiction.
4 Mudrooroo, Wildcat Screaming, 16–17.

5 Patrick White, Riders in the Chariot (New York: Viking, 1961): 360. Further page refer-

ences are in the main text with “RC.”

120 WRITING THE NATION ]

the Berndts’ view given below.6 As the latter point out in the section of their
work entitled “The New Aborigines,”

The significance of Aboriginal identity is of considerable importance because it

defines persons of Aboriginal descent in contrast to non-Aborigines […]. Within
that picture is aboriginal identity as a positive expression of pride in being
Aboriginal and in having a common background however far that may be
removed from the actualities of the past […].7

Patrick Wolfe, in his review of Hodge and Mishra’s work, adds that another
qualifier needs to be added to their definition of Aboriginality – “acceptance
by the Aboriginal community.”8 Dubbo is mentioned as having being born
to a mother who lived in the camp and must therefore have been accepted
by the community, though he never returns to the camp after his adoption
by the Reverend. It is part of Dubbo’s tragedy (as it is, indeed, with so many
part-Aborigines who have grown up in the urban world of the whites) that
he has no substantial link with his traditional world. Healy sees Dubbo as

[…] the great re-threader of the sundered fabric of man in Australia. At the
beginning he is himself a torn creature, caught between the imposed abstrac-
tions of Mr. Calderon’s Christ and the rich but discrete memories of youth in an
Aboriginal community […].9

– but the reference to the “rich” memories is not really substantiated in the
text. A glimpse into what that life is like for urban Aborigines, living as they
do on the fringes of the white community, is evoked imaginatively in Mud-
rooroo’s novel. When the young protagonist is told that his mother had
returned to the Noongar camp to die in her old age, he feels the pathos of it:

I push from my mind the thought of the squalid shacks, slapped together
from bits and pieces off the rubbish dumps, the dirt floors and the leaking roofs
– aching hot in summer, cold and wet in the winter’s rain – Mum with her
fastidious ways lying on filthy blankets and old bags. Mum with her phoney
pride, dependent on the kindness of the people she reared me to despise. The

6 Mishra & Hodge, The Dark Side of the Dream, 63.

7 Ronald M. Berndt & Catherine H. Berndt, The World of the First Australians, 528.
8 Patrick Wolfe, “Reluctant Invaders,” Meanjin 21 (1992): 332–38.
9 J.J. Healy, Literature and the Aborigine in Australia, 201.
] Riders in the Chariot 121

Noongar mob, shiftless and hopeless but with a sort of strength, a blood call to
their kind that she knew and feared.10

The tragedy of the contemporary Aborigine – mostly an urban figure – with

hardly any recollection of his traditional past is represented in such figures as
Wild Cat and Alf Dubbo. The Berndts have commented on the problems
attendant on the crumbling of the traditional way of life:

In the process the indigenous population was almost entirely replaced by a part-
Aboriginal population – a few of them directly descended from the original
local people but most of considerably mixed Aboriginal affinity […].
The problems vis à vis Aborigines resulting on one hand from external
contact and on the other from their own attempts to sustain rapidly changing
traditional patterns – these problems ramified […]. To mention only three, there
were a) economic deprivation; b) restricted educational opportunities […]; and
c) the eroding influence of drinking to excess […].
Low socio-economic status confined groups of Aborigines to particular
urban settings or forced them to the fringes of country towns. This set up or
augmented social barriers which already existed in other forms […]. People
living in such conditions were caught up in a trap of increasing – conspicuously
increasing – poverty and squalor. The only Aborigines who escaped were those
who remained traditionally-oriented.11

Dubbo’s painting entitled “My Life” brings together his stock of recollec-
tions. At the age of thirteen he has few recollections of his Aboriginal child-
hood. These seem overshadowed by memories of his white experience:

[…] he would put into his picture all that he had ever known. The brown dust.
His mother’s tits, black and gravelly, hanging down. The figure of the quarter-
caste, Joe Mullens, striking again and again with his thighs as though he meant
to kill. […] There would be the white people, of course, perpetually naked inside
their flash clothes. And the cup of wine held in the air by the Reverend Tim.
That was, again, most important. Even through the dented sides you could see
the blood tremble in it. And the white worm stirring and fainting in the
reverend pants. And love, very sad. He would paint love as a skeleton from
which they had picked the flesh – an old goanna – and could not find more
[…]. He would have liked to discover whether it really existed, how it tasted.

10 Mudrooroo, Wild Cat Falling, 123.

11 Ronald M. Berndt & Catherine M. Berndt, “An Overview: The Past and the Pres-
ent,” in Berndt, The World of the First Australians, 520–21.
122 WRITING THE NATION ]

[…].
[…] Some of it even Mrs Pask and the rector might have understood, but
some was so secret, so tender […]. (RC. 350–51)

What the final lines of this passage suggest is that there are survivals from
the traditional world that still subsist in his psyche but these barely admit of
clear articulation and seem only suggestible through the medium of painting.
Alf is more disadvantaged, from this perspective, than the youth in Wild Cat
Falling, who still has some contact with a reservoir of traditional culture on
which he can draw through his discovery of the old man, his grandmother’s
brother, a traditional Aboriginal figure who surfaces with redemptive effect
in his story.
How Aboriginal is Alf? Dubbo himself is not quite sure. Mrs Spice is the
first (unlikely) person to set him contemplating the question of his own
identity:
“Sometimes I wonder what you think about, Alf,” she said. “What is inside
of you. Everyone has somethink in them, I suppose.”
[…]
Alf could not tell her. Because he could not simply have said: Everything is
inside of me, waiting for me to understand it. Mrs Spice would not have
understood. Any more than he did, altogether, except in flickers. [...] One day he
would paint the Fiery Furnace, with the figures walking in it. He could see them
quite distinct now. (RC. 362)

On another occasion, he reflects as follows on the complexities of his dual

inheritance:
Disease, like his body, was something he had ended by taking for granted. His
mind was another matter, because even he could not calculate how it might
behave, or what it might become, once it was set free. In the meantime, it would
keep jumping and struggling, like a fish left behind in a pool – or two fish, since
the white people his guardians had dropped another in. (RC. 375)

His connections with his Aboriginal community remain fairly nebulous:

Alf Dubbo was reared in a small town on the banks of a river […]. The river
played an important part in the boy’s early life, and even after he left his
birthplace, his thoughts would frequently return to the dark banks of the brown
river, with its curtain of shiny foliage, and the polished stones which he would
pick over […].
[…]
] Riders in the Chariot 123

Actually, Alf Dubbo was not born in that town. He was born not so many
miles away, at another bend in the ever-recurring river, on a reserve, to an old
gin named Maggie, by which of the whites she had never been able to decide.
(RC. 336–37)

The novel shows considerable insight into the plight of the modern-day
fringe-dwelling Aborigine; it makes all the more impressive White’s capacity
to elevate the product of such a life to the status of visionary artist. Dubbo’s
mother’s situation and his own simply reflect what was the norm. Henry
Reynolds writes of the people he describes as “fringe-dwellers”:

Some of the worst conditions were found in fringe-camps on the outskirts of

the country towns where Aborigines live in makeshift camps. They were no
longer able to live off the land. Casual work in town, begging and prostitution
provided meagre and uncertain earnings. Disease and malnutrition were rife,
mortality high and addiction to alcohol or opium was commonplace [...].

He records the observations of the Southern Protector of Aborigines in

1897, on the population in Western Queensland:

At Roma, Mitchell, and Charleville, there are so many of the men and women
who go daily into town and receive food or a few shillings in return for
household services, or work in the stables and gardens […]. The old people who
remain in the camp, the sick and the helpless opium smokers, are kept alive by
those who go out to work or forage. The women are everywhere the prey of
white men and chinamen, frequently with disastrous results to all concerned.
The white fathers of some of the half-caste children are men whose positions
should be of some guarantee of a higher code of morality […]. In no case did I
find that any aboriginal mother had ever received, on behalf of herself or half-
caste child, the slightest subsequent recognition of ordinary decent benevolence
from the father.12

Wild Cat in Mudrooroo’s novel retains a connection with the traditional past
through the old man whose “tribal sister” was his grandmother. The old
man, whom he has seen from time to time during his childhood, reappears at
the end of the novel, giving him shelter and food:

12 Henry Reynolds, “Aborigines in White Society: Citizens or Outcasts,” in Reynolds,

Dispossession (Sydney: Allen & Unwin): 152, 154.

124 WRITING THE NATION ]

The old man leans to stir the coals, and I see that he is a thoroughbred – not
mongrel like me. A thick mop of white hair throws up the blackness of his lined
face. The skin of his hands is cracked with age, the hands themselves, long
fingered, supple, almost delicate. […]. Something about him twangs a chord of
memory. […]
[…]
“I know your mummie and your grandmummie. That old woman, she been
my tribal sister you know.”13

He seems to know the boy’s past, and intuits his need for guidance through
some kind of connection to his traditional culture. The old man interprets
for the boy the meaning of his recurrent dream of a falling wildcat: it re-
presents a resurfacing in his subconscious of a traditional story and offers a
mode of interpreting his own life:

“I haven’t got a country,” I say. “I don’t belong anywhere.”

“You can’t lose it,” he says. “You go away, but you keep it here.” He claps
his hand under his ribs. “Inside. You dream that place and that song too. I hear
you sing it in your sleep.”
“I have a dream,” I say, “but I don’t remember when I wake up. A sort of
falling dream.”
[…]
The old voice trails on, but now I have remembered the dream. It has been
in some secret part of my mind to which he has given me the key.14

Dubbo has no such reserves to draw on. Yet he is never absolved from the
stereotype of his Aboriginality in the derogatory gaze of the white commu-
nity. It is a perception that shadows every reaction – even of those who
affect to value him like the Reverend and his sister who have adopted him.
Mrs Pask is sometimes uncertain of the wisdom of their having adopted him.
She is afraid of the uses to which he seems determined to put his skills in
painting. Calderon is disappointed at Alf’s sulky refusal to learn his Latin
verbs. The white community’s attitude is reflected in their view, “who but
the rector would not have expected laziness from the bastard of an old black
gin out at the reserve?” (RC. 338). It did not occur to the critics, of course,
that the boy may have inherited his vice from some Irish ancestor. At Mrs
Khalil’s, he is referred to as “that abo” and is tolerated, but it seems that he is

13 Mudrooroo, Wild Cat Falling, 121.

14 Wild Cat Falling, 126–27.
] Riders in the Chariot 125

not regarded as a possible client by the prostitutes. Here he is permitted to

give the drunken performance which amused his workmates in the card-
board-box factory. Hannah, encountering him in one of his drunken fits,
exclaims “‘Waddaya expect? From a drunken bastard of a useless black!’”
(RC. 376) and warns him: “‘Look here, love, some john with a sense of his
own importance who finds a piebald lurching around, or even laying in the
street, is going to collect you, and plenty more said about it’” (RC. 376). At
the cardboard-box factory, “Dubbo’s workmates were in the habit of allow-
ing him a swig or two, because, when they had got him drunk, he gave them
a good laugh” (RC. 376); The authorial voice refers to him consistently as
“the abo” or the “blackfellow”: “the blackfellow was frightened at the touch
of hands” (RC. 374); “For a week or so the blackfellow experienced no in-
clination to paint” (RC. 387). Sometimes this perspective coincides with that
of the white character with whom he becomes embroiled, as in the struggle
with Hannah: “the abo was tearing mad” and Norm “began to apply to the
abo a hold which a sailor had once taught him. And which he had never
known to work,” and succeeds in getting him off Hannah (RC. 394).
Walking in the street, in his illness, “he spat it out in a brown stream, so that
an old woman withdrew into the doorway of her own squalor, away from
the hollow blackfellow” (RC. 389).
The lonely otherness of the black man in a predominantly white com-
munity is clearly established. His perception of the whites as Other is equally
clear. He notes that Hannah “smelled of the powder with which the white
women covered their bodies in an effort to soften the impact of their pres-
ence” (RC. 371); he stands quite apart from the white community’s celebra-
tion of the end of the war, observing how “The white men had never ap-
peared pursier, hairier, glassier, or so confidently superior as they became at
the excuse of peace” (RC. 398). Despite the fact that this Aboriginal figure
in the contemporary context seems bereft of all capacity to reassert his sense
of self, a number of novelistic strategies work to project the conviction that
the indigenous spirit is still capable of asserting its autonomy through this
solitary survivor.

Autonomy
Despite the marginalization of the Aboriginal world and his own distanced
allegiance to it, Alf Dubbo, its solitary representative in the world of the
novel, is constructed in a mode that can still evoke a sense of its autonomy;
126 WRITING THE NATION ]

an adherence to a code of values different from those by which the whites

exist. How can the indigenous person maintain any sense of his own identity
in a world in which his people and his culture have been wholly displaced by
the white despoilers? There is considerable subtlety in the construction of
Alf’s resistance to the pressures of white society:

Everything he did, any fruit of his own meaningful relationship with life, he
would lock up in a tin box, which grew dented and scratched as it travelled with
him from job to job, or lay black and secret underneath his bed, while he played
the part of factory-hand or station roustabout.
Nobody would have thought of opening that box. Most people respected
the moroseness of its owner, and a few were even scared of Dubbo. (RC. 367)

The black tin box, “dented and scratched,” could be seen as symbolic of his
Aboriginal soul. At the end, it contains enough money to protect him from a
pauper’s funeral. Despite all he endures as that most marginalized of figures,
the urban Aborigine, Alf Dubbo seems to still preserve his own sense of self.
There is a radical change of context in this novel: the scenarios of the
other two works (Voss and A Fringe of Leaves) present white protagonists
sojourning in a black world. Here the black world has been transformed into
a white possession; the black is a stranger in his own land, which has now
become a white suburban wilderness. Reynolds has written eloquently on the
condition of these fringe-dwellers:

Some of the worst conditions were found in fringe-camps on the outskirts of

country towns where Aborigines lived in makeshift camps. They were no longer
able to live off the land. Casual work in town, begging and prostitution provided
meagre and uncertain earnings. Disease and malnutrition were rife, mortality
high and addiction to alcohol or opium was commonplace.15

Reynolds continues with an extract from the Southern Protector of Abori-

gines reporting on the hopelessness of a group in contrast to their past situa-
tion. The condition to which the white conquest had succeeded in reducing a
people whose pride and autonomy is inescapable in the two White novels
considered earlier:

The 64 blacks I saw at Charleville are the remnant of one of the most powerful
tribes in Australia. Their condition is too sad and deplorable for accurate de-

15 Henry Reynolds, “Aborigines in White Society: Citizens or Outcasts,” 152–53.

] Riders in the Chariot 127

scription […] The accursed opium habit, and the incidental starvation, neglect
and exposure, had reduced them to a position of unspeakable degradation […]
they have not energy enough even to construct camps, either lying out in the
open air, or in miserable rickety structures of tin and rags, neither proof against
wind nor rain […] saddest of all was the condition of the women and children.
Two women were blind, and three or four practically dying of that terrible
disease which they owe solely to their intercourse with white men...

How to confer on a product of such conditions as these, the de-tribalized,

isolated, homeless, fringe-dweller Alf Dubbo, whose every experience re-
fracts the continued consequences of white imperialist oppression, the kind
of significance Healy describes above is a considerable challenge.
Amazingly, in every encounter with the aggression of the whites, Alf
shows a capacity for extricating himself from situations that threaten to en-
gulf him. Caught in an impossible scenario in which the rector’s sister walks
in on the scene where he is being sexually abused by his guardian, he simply
runs away, leaving the pastor to survive the situation as best he can:

The boy had thought to knot his shoelaces together, and to hang his shoes
round his neck. A practical move, it enabled him to run more easily from the
township of Numburra, which he never saw again. (RC. 357)

Every ‘home’ the indigenous figure occupies is only courtesy of the forbear-
ance of the whites. At the hands of each of the whites who offer him shelter
he suffers some form of abuse or exploitation. That this figure can still re-
sonate a resilience, a kind of imperviousness to the pressures exerted by the
aggression of white culture, testifies to the continued integrity of the indige-
nous figure. After he flees the Reverend Calderon’s home he finds shelter
with Mrs Spice. When she attempts to exploit him beyond the limit of his
tolerance, he does not remain to argue the toss. He rejects her accusation
that he has infected her with disease, reminding her of her multiple loose
liaisons. Hannah offers him a refuge in Sydney, but when he discovers her
deceit in selling his paintings without his knowledge, he takes decisive action:
having confronted her and quite overwhelmed her with the intensity of his
anger, he destroys the rest of his work and leaves her house. His final stop is
Mrs Noonan’s, “where no questions were asked” (RC. 397), and where he
has by now acquired enough confidence to hold his own and brutally snubs
the overtures made by this landlady. He simply announces to her when he
will be staying home, and she dares not disturb him while he spends the last
128 WRITING THE NATION ]

days of his life consuming himself in the composition of his works of art.
When the door of his room is finally broken down, he has escaped into the
invulnerable silence of death.
Throughout his life, Alf shows a continuing resistance to the pressures of
the white culture. He rejects the formal tenets of the Christian faith the
pastor has struggled to inculcate:

The parson told of spiritual love and beauty, how each incident in Our Lord’s
life had been illuminated by those qualities. Of course the boy had heard it all
before, […]. And he had not yet seen Jesus Christ, in spite of his guardian’s
repeated efforts, and a succession of a blurry colour-prints. (RC. 345)

Despite his dependent status, he questions the parson as to the value of the
Latin verbs which he does not wish to master, while he reflects on

those equally woolly precepts, of God in cloud and God in man, which the
rector had attempted to wind round a mind that found them strange, suf-
focating, superfluous. Although he had adopted a few of these, in secret, for ex-
pediency’s sake, and had got into the habit of protecting himself from terrors by
wrapping his thoughts in them, beside some waterhole at night. (RC. 357–58)

His understanding of the Christian mystery will be attained only through his
own experience and expressed in his own way and in his own time. In the
meantime, he simply uses the Christian religion – as the above quotation
illustrates – as a matter of expediency. In order to ingratiate himself with Mrs
Pask, he declares, if he were given the oil paints he covets, he would paint
“Jesus Christ,” although he knows he cannot manage this at that stage of his
experience.
Emily Pask thinks she taught him the art of painting but in his hands, it is
turned into something different:

It seemed that with a few ingratiating strokes the boy might reproduce the
whole world as his teacher knew it.
That would have been consummation, indeed. If, from time to time, she had
not come across those other fruits of her pupil’s talents. Which made her
frightened. (RC. 346)

On his thirteenth birthday, when he receives the oil paints for which he has
been waiting, he executes a work into which he puts “all that he had ever
known” (RC. 350). For Mrs Pask, “‘It is downright madness. […]. It is dirty!
] Riders in the Chariot 129

When there is so much that is beautiful and holy!’” (RC. 351). Thus Alf
asserts his autonomy, his control over a medium which he will use for his
own self-expression, regardless of what his tutor’s ideas and preconceptions
may have been. Even when he has no access to his materials for painting, he
continues to paint in spirit:

There was also, of course, his secret gift. Like his disease. He would no more
have confessed those to a black than he would have to a white. They were the
twin poles, the negative and the positive of his being: the furtive, and destroying
sickness, and the almost as furtive, but regenerating, creative act. (RC. 366)

Despite the fact that the skill in painting itself is something he has acquired
from the white culture, his Aboriginal inheritance is also traceable in his
work – in his painting of the Deposition, for instance:

If Dubbo portrayed the Christ darker than convention would have approved, it
was because he could not resist the impulse. [...] It could have been that the
observer himself contributed the hieroglyphs of his own fears to the flat, almost
skimped figure, with elliptical mouth, and divided canvas face, of the Jew-Christ.
(RC. 491)

His stubborn refusal to sell his paintings for a considerable sum of money is
quite beyond the comprehension of Hannah. This determination to preserve
his integrity of spirit is underlined by his destruction of the remainder of his
work and his quitting the one place where, for a while at least, he had felt a
degree of acceptance, without deigning to collect the money which, she
swears, she has set aside for him.
The final detail of his leaving enough money for his own funeral is the
ultimate sign of a capacity to retain an innate dignity despite the persistent
oppression of a culture that sees him as marginal and dispensable. His utter
loneliness – no other Aboriginal figure appears onstage – underlines his vul-
nerability, but it also reinforces a sense of innate resilience. He is, in fact, glad
of his solitariness: “At Rosetree’s factory, [...] he was always the abo. Nor
would he have wished it otherwise, for that way he could travel quicker,
deeper, into the hunting grounds of his imagination” (RC. 398).

Reversal of white hegemony

Most remarkable is that, even in this most exploited of Aboriginal figures, in
whose story all of the effects of white supremacy in its most negative aspects
130 WRITING THE NATION ]

are traceable (from the tragedy of the “stolen generation” to the problems of
alcohol addiction, ill-health, and early death), it is possible to discern, in
several individual acts, a reversal of the dominating influence of the white; a
capacity not only to resist but even to reverse his position so as to assert his
own control.
There are several vignettes where the white-supremacist image is over-
turned and the dignity of the indigenous figure appears vindicated; its in-
tegrity contrasted with the manoeuverings of the whites who seem his
superiors in respect of social status, or simply the fact of their whiteness. For
example, Alf’s reaction to his guardian’s initial manipulations in his attempt
to seduce his youthful ward is quietly watchful and detached, even touched
with humour. His response to Calderon’s pathetic question as to how he
(Calderon) looked, soon after their sexual encounter, seems cruel in its
ridicule:

The boy was practically bound with laughter. Then, […] he reached out and
seized a handful of the grey belly, and twisted it round, tight, as if it had been
stuff.
[…]
“You look to me” – the boy laughed – “like you was made of old witchetty
grubs.”
And twisted the flesh tighter in support. (RC. 356)

Emily Pask devises her own subterfuge for coping with her knowledge of
her brother’s deviancy, and Reverend Pask stammers his excuses, but Dub-
bo’s silent departure represents his own moral ascendancy. He offers no
explanations, since the situation speaks the guilt of the whites sufficiently. In
his boyhood, he repels their intrusions into his privacy by deliberately choos-
ing to embarrass the prim correctness of the English couple:

Alf Dubbo did love to draw, and would scribble on the walls of the shed
where he milked the rector’s horny cow.
“What are you doing, Alf?” they called.
“I was marking up the weeks since she had the bull,” the boy replied.
That stopped them. He had noticed early on that Mrs Pask preferred to avert
her eyes from nature. So that once more he was free to scribble on the walls of
the shed. (RC. 339)

With the importunate Mrs Spice, despite his extreme youth and dependence
on her for shelter, he teases her by sometimes denying her the sexual favours
] Riders in the Chariot 131

she requires of him: “Sometimes he laughed in her face, sometimes he beat

her with a little switch” (RC. 365).
Mrs Spice’s sole claim to respect, it would seem, is her white skin, and
while she threatens, “‘I’ll fetch the johns in the mornin!’” (RC. 363) it is she
who is responsible for initiating the sexual liaison – more her need than his.
With Hannah, his fury at her betrayal of him reduces her to abject fear. He
attempts to strangle her in his anger. Having destroyed the rest of his paint-
ings, he leaves, not deigning to collect the payment she owes him. By the
time he comes to reside at his final boarding-house he is able to reject the
landlady Mrs Noonan’s attempts at friendliness with a kind of brutality.
He alone is untouched by the guilt shared by all the whites at his work-
place for the crucifixion of the Jew Himmelfarb. It is the solitary black man
who is there to help the Jew when he is cut down from his cross and assist
him with picking up his belongings:

For Alf Dubbo the blackfellow had brought the shawl and phylacteries
which had burst from the small fibre case during the hilarious scrimmage, […].
[…] [Himmelfarb] would not speak, now, or ever. His mouth could never
offer passage to all that he knew to be inside him.
[…]
The Jew was going, he saw, with the gentle, uncertain motion of an eggshell
tossed by flowing water.
The blackfellow would have run after him to tell what he had seen and
understood. But could not. Unless it burst from his fingertips. Never from his
mouth. (RC. 448–49)

Finally, and most importantly, his dominance is ensured by the role assigned
him in the architecture of the text. Alf Dubbo is awarded the supremely im-
portant role of artist and final interpreter of the events of the narrative.
In order to appreciate what White achieves in this novel in comparison
with the norm of the colonialist representations of the black, one needs to
glance again at Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Could the reader even conceive of
the possibility that the cannibal fireman, “improved specimen” that he is is
able not simply to stoke the engine, but to actually assume control of the
riverboat and guide it, and the motley group aboard, to a safe haven with its
mission successfully completed? Could it be possible, in Conrad’s novella,
that the demoniacal witch-doctor acquires language, takes control of the nar-
rative voice, and delivers through it a measured yet eloquent interpretation of
the life of Kurtz and the impact of his influence and, indeed, of European
132 WRITING THE NATION ]

colonialism on the lives of his people? Such possibilities are quite unthink-
able in the context of Heart of Darkness, but this is what the Aboriginal figure
who spends his life working in factories and eluding the exploitation of all
his white ‘benefactors’ is allowed to achieve in Riders in the Chariot.
White has ascribed to Dubbo his own role as creative artist, endeavouring
to inscribe in and through his creative work the task of writing the nation.
The four Riders represent not only, on the metaphysical plane, the triumph
of those able to attain spiritual understanding and insight; they simultaneous-
ly constitute a vision of a future for an Australia where all the varied ele-
ments of its different groups will come together and where, it would seem, a
special role must be assigned to the indigene. Healy pays eloquent tribute to
White’s achievement here:

In placing the burden of synthesis and order on Alf Dubbo in Riders in the
Chariot, he was imputing to him the burden and the difficulties of his own crea-
tive effort as an artist in Australia. There is generosity in this choice which
marks the highest point in the European consciousness of the Aborigine in
Australian literature.16

Transformation
In the first instance, in Riders in the Chariot it would appear that there is a con-
trast to the process of transformation explored in the previous novels, of the
white settler’s progress towards the state of indigeneity; a reverse process
seems to be traced here of the indigene moving into a space of whiteness or
of part-whiteness and recognizing, even as the European figures of the pre-
viously analysed narratives do, the possible affinities with the feared and
rejected racial Other. The potential for this development has already been
strongly suggested in Voss. Dubbo is the natural successor to Jackie, that
Aboriginal figure from the earlier novel Voss whose tragic involvement with
the white man becomes a bond that he does not find easy to exorcise. There
are moments in the narrative which suggest that Jackie’s involvement with
Voss and his party has changed the boy so that he cannot return, as Dugald
can, to his earlier life. He obviously experiences some struggle over his
abandonment of the expedition, when he confesses, in response to Voss’s
appeals, “‘No good, Mr. Voss’” (V. 365). When Voss offers him his hand,

16 J.J. Healy, Literature and the Aborigine, 205.

] Riders in the Chariot 133

the boy is obviously moved, and “A wave of sad warm magic and yearning
for things past broke over the blackfellow” (V. 365). Later, after the death of
Voss, he runs away from his adoptive tribe and becomes a wanderer through
the desert regions, eventually, because of his experiences, gaining the reputa-
tion of a seer among his people.
In Healy’s view,
Alf has taken over the shifting and troubled mind of Jackie, and he does so as
the Aborigine who has been touched into uncertainty and deprivation by
contact with white civilization, of whom Jackie was the stereotype.17

Alf’s connections with the white world are much more developed. Most sig-
nificantly, his body is already inscribed with the mark of white intrusion.
Hannah describes him as “a piebald.” Dubbo is the offspring of a union be-
tween a ne’er-do-well Irishman and a gin on the reservation. The mixture of
blood, it seems, is apparent in his physical appearance.
He has lived long enough in a white world to have developed ties with it.
There are other, less crucial traces of his white enculturation. Miss Pask’s
training has instilled certain habits of hygiene:

He avoided his own people, whatever the degree of colour, because of a certain
delicacy with cutlery, acquired from the parson’s sister, together with a general
niceness or squeamishness of behaviour, which he could sink recklessly enough
when forced, as he had throughout the reign of Mrs Spice, but which haunted
him in its absence like some indefinable memory. (RC. 366)

Again, when taking up residence in a rented room he still ensures its neat-
ness, a quality, it is remarked by the narrator, which “would have pleased the
sister of a parson.” Even in the final days of his illness, he shows he is still
affected by this early training.
As noted earlier, orality is a feature of the indigene. Dubbo’s capacity for
reading is an uncommon one, aligning him more closely with his white
inheritance. Yet, while he is drawn to make his way to the public library,
reading does not come naturally to him. He envies the whites who seem to
be at home in the place:

In the great library, the radiators would be pouring out the consoling soup of
warmth. All the readers had found what they had been looking for, the black

17 J.J. Healy, Literature and the Aborigine in Australia, 199.

134 WRITING THE NATION ]

man noticed with envy. But he was not altogether surprised; words had always
been the natural weapons of whites. Only he was defenceless. Only he would be
looking around. After reading, and yawning, and skipping, and running his
thumb down a handful of pages to hear them rise like a flock of birds, he would
arrange the books in an all too solid pile, and stare. (RC. 368)

Yet sometimes he is rewarded – as when he picks up an abandoned vol-

ume and encounters “the sad story of Our Lord Jesus Christ […]. He read,
but the expression of the eyes still eluded him. […]. He opened the Gospel
of the Beloved Disciple. Then his throat did hurt fearfully. It burned” (RC.
368).
When he leaves Hannah’s place and takes a room on the outskirts of Bar-
ranugli, the habit grows on him:

He read a good deal now, both owing to a physical languor caused by his illness,
and because of a rage to arrive at understanding. Mostly he read the Bible, or
the few art books he had bought, but for preference the Book of the Prophets,
and even by now the Gospels. The latter, however, with suspicion and surprise.
And he would fail, as he had always failed before, to reconcile those truths with
what he had experienced. (RC. 397)

Indeed, Alf’s encounter with the idea of the Chariot and the desire which
comes to consume him of reproducing his own vision of it in painting first
comes to him from books: first in the art book given to him as a gift from
Emily Pask:

Then the boy stopped at a picture he would always remember, […]. In the
picture the chariot rose, behind the wooden horses, along the pathway of the
sun. The god’s arm – for the text implied it was a god – lit the faces of the four
figures, so stiff, in the body of the tinny chariot. The rather ineffectual torch
trailed its streamers of material light. (RC. 344–45)

In the passages from the rag-picker’s bible, he discovers more inspiration for
his painting:

During the nights which followed Dubbo spent hours reading from the rag-
collector’s Bible. The voices of the Prophets intoxicated him as he had never
been in life, and soon he was laying on the grave splendour of their words with
the colours of his mind. At this period, too, he constructed the skeletons of
several works which he did not have the strength or knowledge to paint. “The
Chariot,” for instance. Ezekiel’s vision superimposed upon that of the French
] Riders in the Chariot 135

painter in the art book, was not yet his own. All the details were assembled in
the paper sky, but the light still had to pour in. […].
The picture he did paint now was “The Fiery Furnace,” […]. (RC. 379)

This gift of painting is something he has acquired from his white benefac-
tors. Emily Pask gives him his first lessons in painting and also his first set of
oil paints. It becomes thereafter the means by which he achieves a mode of
self-expression which is entirely his own. In his art, he is finally able to ex-
press the unverbalized, deeply embedded ambivalences of his own hybrid
experience.
For a long while he is unable to paint the Christ-figure, because the love
which he has been taught is at the core of Christian belief has eluded him
throughout his life. It is not until the final events of the narrative sequence
that he is able to grasp the central Christian mysteries of love and suffering.
It is repeatedly underlined that the love he has been taught is at the core of
Christian teachings has always been absent from his own experience of
Christians. Some scraps of belief have remained, however, if only for
expediency’s sake. Although he runs away from his guardian, Reverend
Calderon, he does experience some sense of loss:

The absence of his guardian was not unlike that caused by the theft of some
old woolly, hitherto undervalued garment snatched from an unsuspecting
back on a frosty morning. Less material, more subtly missed, because he
would not have admitted, were those equally woolly precepts, of God in
cloud and God in man, which the rector had attempted to wind round a mind
that found them strange, suffocating, superfluous. Although he had adopted a
few of these, in secret, for expediency’s sake, and had got into the habit of
protecting himself from terrors by wrapping his thoughts in them, beside
some waterhole at night. (RC. 357–58)

The suggestion here is that he not only misses the personal caring provided
by his guardians but also the scraps of Christian belief which he has adopted
for the sense of security they afforded him. Ironically, while he has inherited
some Christian concepts from involvement with whites, it is their own beha-
viour that prevents his deeper acceptance of their faith:

Certainly he had never expected much, but was sickened afresh each time his
attitude was justified. Angels were demons in disguise. Even Mrs Pask had
dropped her blue robe, and grown brass nipples and a beak. Such faith as he
had, lay in his own hands. (RC. 397)
136 WRITING THE NATION ]

The narrative records a sequence of such episodes, where Alf experiences

betrayal at the very hands of those who have initially appeared to him as
saviours, besides exacting a contribution to his upkeep through working in a
“business” at the dump. His next offer of shelter, from Hannah, seems
satisfactory for a while, until he discovers that she has sold his paintings
without his knowledge; and so the list of betrayals by his would-be “angels”
continues. He has an intuitive grasp of the numinous, but his reservations are
quite clearly stated:

Where he could accept God because of the spirit that would work in him at
times, the duplicity of the white men prevented him considering Christ, except
as an ambitious abstraction, or realistically, as a man. (RC. 397)

So the very space of deepest enmeshment with the white culture, the Chris-
tianity which Reverend Calderon has striven to inculcate in him, is also the
source of deepest alienation. Since whites and Christian are equated in this
narrative, Dubbo’s halting acceptance and understanding of each are inter-
twined to provide another paradigm of how the journey for the protagonist
becomes, simultaneously, another Whitean journey towards nation and jour-
ney towards wholeness.
In a sense, the whole of his transformation is encompassed in his attain-
ment of this understanding. This comes about through his immersion in the
experience of the “crucifixion” of Himmelfarb and its aftermath. He has
been present at the “crucifixion” and observed the hatred and malice to
which the Jew is subjected. Only later does he actually observe the love that
is also at play in this story: when he looks through the window of the God-
bold shed, he sees the washer-woman and her family and the old eccentric,
Miss Hare, caring for the dying Himmelfarb. Compressed into this moment
is a final understanding of the love he has only heard of but never observed
or experienced before. The deepest irony is that it is brought into play
around the same human being who has been a victim of the most senseless
cruelty at the hands of other ‘Christians’. Dubbo’s illumination becomes
transmuted into his painting of the Deposition: the Christ story re-interpre-
ted in terms of a contemporary event:

[…] it did not surprise him now to find the same woman caring for the Jew.
[…]. And the fox-coloured woman from Xanadu lay across the Jew’s feet,
warming them by whatever methods which her instincts taught her.
] Riders in the Chariot 137

[…] and the young fellow, his back moulded by the strain, was raising the
body of the sick man, […].
The act itself was insignificant, but became, as the watcher saw it, the
supreme act of love.
So, in his mind, he loaded with panegyric blue the tree from which the
women, and the young man His disciple, were lowering their Lord […].
Dubbo, taking part at the window, did not think he could survive this
Deposition, which, finally, he had conceived. (RC. 469)

Returning to his lodgings, Dubbo is at last able to paint the picture of Christ
which has eluded him since boyhood.
Once […], he ventured to retouch the wounds of the dead Christ with the love
that he had never dared express in life, and at once the blood was gushing from
his own mouth, the wounds in the canvas were shining and palpitating with his
own conviction.
[…]
Towards the end of that day, he rose, […] was driven again to give expression to the love
he had witnessed, and which, inwardly, he had always known must exist. (RC. 489)
(emphasis mine)

The other image that has haunted him through life – and which he had
begun to paint before – of the Chariot, is also completed in the final se-
quences of his story and that of the novel as a whole. Here the mystical
message of the text coalesces with the national and political themes which
are also part of its import. Dubbo is now able to fill in the features of the
four Living Creatures, the four protagonists, each the centre of a separate
narrative, but linked by their common intuition of the numinous and the
sufferings to which each has been subjected in their lives. Note the sym-
bolism present in the representation of each of these beings:
One figure might have been done in marble, massive, white, inviolable. A
second was conceived in wire, with a star inside the cage, and a crown of barbed
wire. The wind was ruffling the harsh, fox-coloured coat of the third, flattening
the pigs’s snout, while the human eye reflected all that was ever likely to happen.
The fourth was constructed of bleeding twigs and splattered leaves, but the head
could have been a whirling spectrum. As they sat facing one another in the
chariot-sociable, the souls of his Four Living Creatures were illuminating their
bodies, in various colours. Their hands, which he painted open, had surrendered
their sufferings, but not yet received beatitude. (RC. 494)

No indication of race or colour is apparent.

138 WRITING THE NATION ]

These final paintings signal the end of the transformation-process set

going a long while before. In his final opening to the meaning of Christianity,
something which he has been unable to grasp before despite all of the efforts
of the pastor and his sister, the gap between himself and the white culture
seems finally negotiated. What is important is that this understanding has
been mediated to him through his own experience and is expressed in his
own terms; it is not a passive ingestion of the doctrines the Reverend and his
sister have sought to inculcate in him through the period of his boyhood de-
pendence on them.

Outcome
The outcome of the contact between white and black here is remarkable for
its new variation. In the other two novels, the white man/woman has travel-
led into the black world and has suffered in it, but has in the process ac-
quired understanding of self as well as of the racial Other; here the focus is
on the black man who has travelled the ‘white’ world and found it repugnant.
Under the guise of benevolence, he endures abuse and exploitation. The
Christian mysteries which whites have tried to instil in him have proved
meaningless, until his own experiences establish his own unique under-
standings.

Moments of connection
The stages on this path to illumination have been strung across carefully
crafted moments of connection strewn through the narrative, in episodes
where Alf the black man is caught up in the realization of a deep affinity
which exists between him and some of the white persons he encounters.
These moments balance the pattern of rejection and betrayal he has experi-
enced at the hands of other white persons he encounters in his life. These
highlighted encounters function quite strategically to establish a sense of the
interrelatedness of these diverse narratives. Those critics who have berated
White for constructing characters who seem congenitally incapable of com-
munication with others need to take account of the fact that in Riders in the
Chariot each of the four protagonists (all from astonishingly varied back-
grounds) experiences moments of communication at the deepest spiritual
level with each other, and the black man who would normally exist on the
furthest margins of that society is at the centre of each. At each of the
] Riders in the Chariot 139

whites’ encounters with the black man, the fact of that particular individual’s
isolation from his or her own white society seems particularly emphasized.
Dubbo’s encounter with Miss Hare is recounted in her narrative, before
the reader is actually acquainted with him and his story. It is the morning
when Miss Hare has begun to feel fear of Mrs Jolley, whom she has just
taken into her employment:

On such a morning, of confusion and solution, she found herself closer to

the dark man than she had ever been before. Already she had come across this
person once or twice in the roads round Sarsaparilla […].
He was an abo, or something, Else, the eldest Godbold, thought.
[…]
[…]. Seldom did she meet human beings, and those she did, she would not
know how to address. [...]
So she would peer out at her dark man […]. Once she had entered through
his eyes, and at first glance recognized familiar furniture, and once again she had
entered in, and their souls had stroked each other with reassuring feathers, but
very briefly, for each had suddenly taken fright […]. (RC. 61–62)

White draws on all his superb mastery of language and imagery to suggest a
contact at once deeply intimate yet tentative, intrinsically fragile yet supreme-
ly reassuring. There is another occasion on which they speak: Dubbo warns
her that she is standing in a bog and she would find the water coming into
her shoes, and “his voice sounded agreeable, direct, and unexpected” (RC.
63). Miss Hare’s story from childhood has been one of rejection by her
father, even her mother, and, indeed, by all her social circle. The communion
she experiences in this fleeting contact is not matched by anything else she
enjoys, not even with the other two visionaries, Himmelfarb and Mrs God-
bold. (There is no suggestion of a movement into the inner consciousness of
the other as there is in this episode.) When he next sees her, “the fox-
coloured woman from Xanadu lay across the Jew’s feet, warming them by
methods which her instincts had taught.” In his painting, he projects the
depth of his understanding of her:

Now he began to paint the madwoman of Xanadu, not as he had seen her in
her covert of leaves beside the road, but as he knew her from their brief com-
munion, when he had entered that brindled soul subtly and suddenly as light. So he
painted her hands like the curled, hairy crooks of ferns. He painted the Second
Mary curled, like a ring-tail possum, in a dreamtime womb of transparent skin,
or at centre of a whorl of faintly perceptible wind. […] his memory re-enacted
140 WRITING THE NATION ]

the trustful attitudes of many oblivious animals: […]. There she was, harsh to
the eye, but for all her snouted substance, illuminated by the light of instinct
inside the transparent weft of whirling, procreative wind. (RC. 490) (my em-
phasis)

When his encounter with Mrs Godbold takes place, the moment of com-
munion with the black man is once again set in a context which suggests the
isolation of this particular white person from her own kind. Mrs Godbold is
making her desperate bid to rescue her husband from the prostitute Mrs
Khalil’s house, when the drunken Alf arrives and puts on his song-and-dance
act (RC. 298–301). Mrs Godbold gathers that the black man is “pretty sick,”
and shows him a compassionate concern that moves him when he recollects
it later:

Mrs Godbold […] produced a handkerchief which she had down the front
of her dress, and stooped, and wiped the blood away.
“You should go home,” she said […].
[…]
“Are you comfortable?” she asked. “At home, I mean.”
As if he was a human being.
[…]
He was looking, it was difficult to say, whether at or beyond the gentle
woman in the black hat […]. (RC. 302)

His voice makes a deep impression on her, taking her back to a mystical ex-
perience of her childhood:

In a voice so oblivious and convinced that Ruth Joyner was again sitting in the
cathedral of her home town, watching the scaffolding of music as it was erected,
herself taking part in the exquisitely complicated operation. Nor had she heard a
voice issue with such certainty and authority out of any mouth since the strange
gentleman referred to that same music. (RC. 302)

She is moved to discuss with the black man, with a curious intimacy, the
kind of memories that remain with one, the happiest or “other things.” He
recalls picnics by the river with his guardian, and she, the winters when the
family of children were most united. Around them the chaos of Khalil’s
brothel continues, but these two “kept to their island, not exactly watching,
for they had their thoughts” (RC. 304).
] Riders in the Chariot 141

As with Miss Hare, his construction of her in his painting shows the same
depth of penetration into her innermost psyche and understanding of her
life-experiences:

He touched the cheek of the First Mary quite as she had wiped his mouth with
the ball of her handkerchief as he lay on the lino the night at Mollie Khalil’s.
Her arms, which conveyed the strength of stone, together with that slight and
necessary roughness, wore the green badges of all bruised flesh. […] the breasts
of the immemorial woman were running with a milk that had never, in fact,
dried. […]. He tried to recall the seams of her coat, the hem of her dress, the
dust on her blunt shoes, […]. (RC. 489)

Alf’s most sustained encounter is with the Jew, Himmelfarb. Through his
observation of the treatment of Himmelfarb, Alf is brought to recognize that
the blacks are not the only recipients of white cruelty. The Himmelfarb
narrative brings the Holocaust and awareness of a much larger theatre of
human cruelty and suffering into the text. Historically, Fanon shows that the
Jew and the black have a shared space of common suffering:

At first thought it may seem strange, that the anti-Semite’s outlook should be
related to that of the Negrophobe. It was my philosophy professor, a native of
the Antilles, who recalled the fact to me one day: “Whenever you hear anyone
abuse the Jews, pay attention, because he is talking about you.” And I found
that he was universally right […] he meant quite simply an anti-Semite is
inevitably anti-Negro.18

In Black Skin, White Masks, which is also primarily an exploration of the

trauma of being black in a white world, Fanon is frequently drawn to con-
template the fate of the Jew as replicating aspects of the fate of the Negro.
Referring frequently to Jean–Paul Sartre’s Anti-Semite and the Jew, he makes
the point that there are salient features of difference; that, in fact, the attitude
to the Negro is more demeaning:

In Anti-Semite and the Jew (p. 95) Sartre says: “They [the Jews] have allowed
themselves to be poisoned by the stereotype that others have had of them, and
they live in fear that their acts will correspond to the stereotype […]. We may
say their conduct is perpetually overdetermined from the inside.”

18 Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 122.

142 WRITING THE NATION ]

All the same, the Jew can be unknown in his Jewishness […]. His actions, his
behaviour is the final determinant. He is a white man and […] can go unnoticed
[…]. Granted the Jews are harassed […] hunted down, exterminated, cremated.
But these are little family quarrels. The Jew is disliked from the moment he is
tracked down […] I am given no chance. I am overdetermined from without. I
am the slave not of the ‘idea’ that others have of me but of my own
appearance.19

Throughout Chapter 6, entitled ‘The Negro and Psychopathology,” Fanon

continues to allude to the situation of the Jew and compare it with that of
the Negro:

On a phenomenological level there would be a double reality to be observed.

The Jew is feared because of his potential for acquisitiveness. ‘They’ are every-
where […].’ They’ control everything […]. As for the Negroes, they have
tremendous sexual powers. What do you expect, with all the freedom they have
in their jungles […] they will flood us with little mulattoes.
Things are indeed going to hell […].
The government and the civil service are at the mercy of the Jews.
Our women are at the mercy of the Negroes.20

Himmelfarb, having survived the experience of the Holocaust, has settled

into his job at Rosetree’s factory. He is conscious of his isolation:

A few of his workmates might have joked with him, […] but refrained on
perceiving something strange. Nothing like his face had ever been seen by many
of them. To enter in search of what it might contain, was an expedition nobody
cared to undertake. If sometimes the foreigner found it necessary to speak, it
was as though something preposterous had taken place: […]. (RC. 218)

It is only with the blackfellow that he experiences a fleeting affinity:

Once or twice the blackfellow paused in his rounds of sweeping, on coming

level with the Jew’s drill.
Then Himmelfarb decided: Eventually, perhaps, I shall speak, but it is not
yet the appropriate occasion.
Not that there was reason to suspect affinity of any kind, except that the
black would establish a certain warmth of presence before moving on. (RC. 219)

19 Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 116–17.

20 Black Skin, White Masks, 157.
] Riders in the Chariot 143

The rapprochement is tangible enough to be noted by others, who take it

upon themselves to warn Himmelfarb that the dark man is “Dirty”: i.e., as
one factory worker explains to him, “‘means he has every disease a man can
get. From the bollocks up’” (RC. 219). Fanon’s comment, quoted earlier,
that the prejudice against the man of colour is greater than that against the
Jew, would seem to be borne out here; Alf’s appearance alone is enough to
trigger the prejudiced reaction. At least at the start, there is less prejudice
against the Jew than there is against the black. When the Jew grazes his hand
against a machine, only Alf appears to notice, though he withdraws without
making any sign.
Then there is the specific incident in which their affinity is acknowledged,
when the Jew finds in the washroom the book belonging to Dubbo, opened
at the page describing the four Living Creatures:

A certain enduring warmth, established in the beginning, had been perhaps

intensified. The Jew was conscious of it if ever the blackfellow passed. Some-
thing almost tactile took place between them, but scarcely ever again was there
any exchange of words. (RC. 335)

The text suggests brilliantly the most delicate of connections; sometimes one
or the other almost nods or smiles, but generally they maintain a “perfect
detachment” – until one day Himmelfarb actually asks for and gets to know
the black man’s name.
From here on, there is a move into Alf’s own story. This connection with
the Jew, though limited in time, is traced, of all the connections Dubbo
establishes in his life, in the most extensive way. This is also perhaps most
appropriate, in that Himmelfarb would be, of all the whites, the most perse-
cuted and marginalized of beings; subjected in the larger world of Europe, as
the Aborigine in Australia has been, to genocide:

There was a bloke, it was learnt, at one of the drills down the lower end,
some kind of bloody foreigner. Whom the abo would watch with interest. But
the man seldom raised his eyes. And the abo did not expect.
Until certain signs were exchanged, without gesture or direct glance.
[…] a state of trust became established by subtler than any human means, so
that he resented it when the Jew finally addressed him […]. Later, he realized, he
was comforted to know that the Chariot did exist outside the prophet’s vision
and his own mind. (RC. 398)
144 WRITING THE NATION ]

Dubbo is there at the conclusion of the ‘crucifixion’ of Himmelfarb to assist

with picking up his shawl and the phylacteries. He has been deeply moved by
what he has witnessed but is unable to express anything in words (RC. 449).
Alf’s painting of “The Deposition” finally expresses the spiritual under-
standing of Christian love and compassion which he has ultimately attained.
It also offers a compressed political lesson, in that it closes the gap that has,
till then, existed between him and the European inheritance which he has
hitherto held at a distance. Alf’s painting of the “Riders in the Chariot” por-
trays the four individuals whose narratives are separate and yet intertwined in
the text of the novel, each of whom have suffered rejection and even cruelty
at the hands of their own families, or of society, but have been sustained by
their perceptions of the numinous and by contact with other human beings
who share the same vision. In the sharing of that vision, race and colour are
of no relevance. The spiritual parable intertwines with the parable of nation.
Healy has summarized eloquently his perception of what he sees White as
having achieved in thus allocating to the indigenous figure the enormously
important role of the artist/seer in this novel:

History does not stop at these moments but it does stop sufficiently long for a
clearing of comprehension to open up. The blindness that diminished Benne-
long and Bungaree was most seriously retracted by White’s penetrating revisions
of Aboriginal man in the figures of Dugald, Jackie and Alf Dubbo – above all,
Alf Dubbo.21

In his painting, Dubbo renders a vision of Christ’s sufferings as he had seen

them reincarnated in the persecution of Himmelfarb; the caring of Christ’s
mother and disciples re-enacted in the caring of the women and the young
man. It is an Aboriginal rendition of the Christian story:

The Christ, of course, was the tattered Jew from Sarsaparilla and Rosetree’s
factory. Who had, it was seen, experienced other lives, together with those dis-
eases of body and mind to which men are subject. If Dubbo portrayed the
Christ darker than convention would have approved, it was because he could
not resist the impulse. Much was omitted, which, in its absence, conveyed. It
could have been that the observer himself contributed the hieroglyphs of his
own fears to the flat, almost skimped figure, with elliptical mouth, and divided
canvas face, of the Jew-Christ. (RC. 491)

21 J.J. Healy, Literature and the Aborigine in Australia, 204–205.

] Riders in the Chariot 145

In the darker skin of the Christ, it is suggested that Dubbo sees the suffer-
ings of the Jew and of the black man fuse with the Christ figure – both
victims of man’s inhumanity to man.
He is also able, at last, to complete the other image that has haunted him
through life – and which he had begun to paint before – of the Chariot,
which had been stolen from him in an unfinished state by reason of
Hannah’s duplicity. Here the mystical message of the text coalesces with the
national and political (RC. 494). He is now able to fill in the features of the
four Living Creatures – the four protagonists of the four separate narratives
– linked by their common intuition of the numinous and the sufferings to
which each has been subjected in their lives. No indication of race or colour
is apparent in this painting, as though the implication is clear of the equality
of all in the Chariot of the nation’s future. These paintings signal the end of
the transformation-process set going a long while back. In his opening to the
meaning of Christianity, something which he has been unable to grasp
before, despite all of the efforts of the pastor and his sister, the gap between
Dubbo and white culture seems to be finally negotiated.
The outcome of the contact between white and black here is thus remark-
able for its new variation. In the other two novels, the white man/woman
has travelled into the black world, has suffered in it, and through that pro-
cess has acquired understanding of self as of that world; here the focus is on
the black man who has travelled the white world and found it repugnant.
Under the guise of benevolence he has endured sexual abuse, exploitation,
and even robbery. The Christian mysteries which whites have tried to com-
pel him to accept have proved meaningless to him – until his own experi-
ences instil in him his own unique understandings, opening to him a central
aspect of the white culture that had been alien despite his long acquaintance
with it. He has also grasped that suffering, persecution, and marginalization
are not the lot of the Aborigine alone but are endemic in the human con-
dition.
Is that last act to be interpreted as a final capitulation to the dominant
white culture – or is it an act of subversion? In fact, it is both. Homi Bhabha
has shown that mimicry of the colonial power can be an inherently subver-
sive act.22 Here Dubbo reproduces what appears to be a version of the tradi-

22 Homi Bhabha, “Signs Taken for Wonders: Questions of Ambivalence and Authority

Under a Tree Outside Delhi, May 1817,” in Europe and Its Others, ed. Francis Barker, Peter
Hulme, Margaret Iverson & Diana Oxley (Colchester: University of Essex, 1985): 89–106.
146 WRITING THE NATION ]

tional scene of the Deposition. It is an act of worship in the understanding

shown of the central Christian story and its perennial significance; at the
same time, it encapsulates a profoundly satirical judgment on white society.
The Jews crucified Christ – the historical wrongdoing to which traditional
sentiment against the Jew is traceable. His picture shows the Jew being cruci-
fied by the Christian, the time-honoured tragedy finding repetition with a
change of ‘cast’ which nevertheless dramatizes the truth of the innate cruelty
in human nature. Fused with this representation of the brutality of white
humanity, there is also the celebration of the love and compassion shown by
the minor players in the drama. The original Marys are represented here in
the figures of Mrs Godbold, the ‘mad’ woman of Xanadu, and the disciple
John by the young man who is Else’s fiancé. Again there is an embedded
comment, in that these persons are the marginalized and powerless members
of the community who display the capacity for compassion. Dubbo has at
last achieved a grasp of the Christian mysteries, arrived at through his own
hard experience. The continuing obstacle of the behaviour of Christians has
been the barrier to his grasp of Christianity. Against this, however, he has
now acquired a wider experience of understanding and compassion. Now,
while he sees the frailties of the Christian, he also has insight into the
strength, love, and compassion which he has experienced through his con-
tact with the other visionaries.
It is startling in that in a novel set in a context in which the marginal-
ization of the black man could not be more emphasized, the novelist’s sleight
of hand has also succeeded in effecting a valorization of his role and signi-
ficance. The extent to which Riders in the Chariot reverses the colonialist dis-
course embedded in a text like Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is perhaps best
underlined by a form of analogy. It is as though the “improved specimen,”
the “poor devil” who “ought to have been clapping his hands and stamping
his feet on the bank,” suddenly moves from beyond this stereotyped role
and instead of limiting himself to simply “replenishing the water in the
boiler” (as he had been instructed by his white masters) in order that “the
evil spirit would not get angry and venge itself upon him,” had decided to
assume command of the river boat and steer the motley assembly on board
to a safe destination with their varied missions accomplished. Or, to select
another analogy from Heart of Darkness, as if one of those bestial creatures on
the banks, clapping hands and stamping feet, were suddenly endowed with
the human capacity to articulate for the reader an eloquent interpretation of
the events of colonial history, of all that the white invaders had inflicted on
] Riders in the Chariot 147

his people, and of how their depredations had desecrated and destroyed his
land and culture. (This, after all, is what the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe
attested he had been moved to do in writing his novel Things Fall Apart.23 It
was a reaction to his reading of a colonialist text such as Conrad’s and the
realization that he, as an African man, was being represented as one of those
inarticulate savages.)
Marlow in Heart of Darkness could barely acknowledge the humanity of the
black man; “a remote kinship” was barely discernible:

We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster

[…]. It was unearthly, and the men were – No, they were not inhuman. Well,
you know that was the worst of it – this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It
would come slowly to one. They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid
faces, but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity –like yours-
the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar […].
(HD. 36–37)

Only the vaguest apprehension of human kinship with the blacks is bearable
for the protagonist in Heart of Darkness. Riders in the Chariot, by contrast, has
not only constructed the black man as recognizably human but it has also
compelled recognition of his potential as a gifted, even superior, being.

]^

23 See Achebe’s sharp critique of the Conrad novel in “An Image of Africa: Racism in

Conrad’s Heart of Darkness” (1965), in Achebe, Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays, 1965–
87 (London: Heinemann, 1988): 1–13.
 Conclusion

W
HILE THERE HAVE BEEN several admirable full-length ap-
praisals of the work of Patrick White in the last three or four
decades, a study of the figure of the indigene in his novels has
not been a particular focus in any of them. White’s thematic preoccupations
with the mystical and transcendental, the acuity of his social criticism, the
rich and enormously divergent influences on his work, the idiosyncrasies of
his style, have usually filled the canvases of critics attempting to interpret his
large and complex oeuvre. Conversely, and more recently, in those literary/
critical studies in which issues related to the indigene have been the focus,
White’s work has generally seemed to miss out on the attention it deserves.
This is often understandable, in that the authors have had their eyes on a
broader spectrum than the work of one writer. It is time, though, to assess in
some detail the nature and significance of this motif in White’s work, a sig-
nificance which quite outweighs the fact that it is highlighted in only three of
his eleven novels and does not surface in either the short stories or the plays.
In two of these novels, Voss and A Fringe of Leaves, White looks deeply
into the historical past; in the third, Riders in the Chariot, he assesses the direc-
tions in the national life of a contemporary Australia whose cultural horizons
are expanding under the pressure of international events and the arrival in
the land of refugees from Europe. In each of these, the indigene is a signi-
ficant presence deserving of re-assessment and revaluation. J.J. Healy, in his
seminal work Literature and the Aborigine in Australia, traces evidence in Aus-
tralian literature of “the continual attempt to overcome the tragedy of
cultural distance and to bring the Aborigine into focus.” In the succinct
introduction to the first edition of his work, he has summarized some of his
perceptions as follows:
150 WRITING THE NATION ]

In its efforts to place its contact with the Aborigine into perspective, Australian
literature began with considerable handicaps. Nothing was sufficiently stable to
give the writer the necessary grip on his subject. The destruction of the Abori-
ginal society went hand in hand with the formation of an European society.
Sightings and visibilities were almost out of the question. Problems of colony
compounded those of race […].
The subject of this book deals with the efforts of white Australian writers to
come to grips with the Aborigine. Clearly in all their cases, their interest in the
Aborigine is touched by an interest in themselves, in Australia itself as a land
and as social-political structure.1

Explaining the genesis of his interest in the Aborigine in Australian literature,

Healy records his conviction that Ralph Ellison’s essay “Twentieth Century
Fiction and the Black Mask of Humanity,” suggesting that the whole of
American life be viewed as a drama enacted on the body of a Negro giant
lying trussed up like Gulliver, triggered in him a recognition of the relation-
ship of this image to Australian literature and society and its relationship to
the Aboriginal figure:
I asked myself what Australian literature, what Australia itself would look like
from this perspective. The image of Ellison’s Black Gulliver stayed with me
[…].
I had already gone through much of this literature by 1968 […] I began to
see an Aboriginal subject that cut right into the centre of their doubts, fears,
hopes, traumas […]. I was struck by how often a consciousness of who they
[Australians] themselves were became tied into the quality of their contact, the
Aborigines. It occurred to me that the novel itself was a field of consciousness,
one which had been alerted into existence by a disturbing experience; the
working through of the experience became possible only through the form of
the novel.2

Healy notes the silences of the nineteenth century and the difficulties in
probing the consciousness of the literary community of the time on these
issues. He notes the evolution throughout this period of myths of national
identity in which the Aborigine had no place.

1 J.J Healy, “Introduction” to Literature and the Aborigine in Australia (St. Lucia: U of
Queensland P , 1978): 2–3.
2 J.J. Healy, “Introduction” to the revised edition of Literature and the Aborigine in Aus-

tralia (1989): xi–xv.

] Conclusion 151

In the re-examination of the relationship between the emergent Australian

community and the original inhabitants of the land (or what was left of
them) which began in the 1940s, Healy grants an important role to the work
of Patrick White. In a chapter entitled “Rehabilitation and Transcendence,”
devoted to the work of White and the poet Judith Wright, he observes:
Her poetry and his prose may be described as the emergence of a heightened
consciousness of Australia, in Australia. They outflanked the horizons of
nationalism, found their way back to the nineteenth century, opened up the
ambiguities of that period, and shaped a language for these discoveries. The
Aborigine featured seriously in the world of both writers.3

There are differences in the achievement of Wright and White that need to
be articulated. Besides this, one wonders also at the omission of so important
a text as A Fringe of Leaves from a study of this nature. The omission is sur-
prising, since the novel was published in 1976, at least two years before the
first edition of Healy’s important work, but neither in this version (1978) nor
in the revised edition issued over ten years later (1989) is there reference to
this novel, which challenges orientalist perceptions of the Aborigine in so
many radical ways. (It is, however, listed in the bibliographical section of the
second edition of his work.) It leaves one with the impression that, despite
Healy’s insights, the full significance of White’s delineation of the Aboriginal
figure has not been fully investigated.
There have been more than a few comparisons made between White and
Wright. Both came from a background of grazier families whose wealth was
founded on the expropriation of the Aborigine, and both have expressed
their abhorrence of white attitudes to the fate of the Aboriginal people.
However, in his work White does not express that sense of deep guilt and
awareness of the need to exculpate the sins of the ancestors which is every-
where in the work of Wright, finding expression in such poems as “Bora
Ring” or “Nigger’s Leap, New England,” or in her prose narratives such as
the The Generations of Men (1959).4 Healy makes the subtle point that her
poems are more than poems of lament for the lost past, they reaffirm a sense
of the continuation of the Aboriginal spirit as a tangible presence still there
in the land.

3J.J. Healy, Literature and the Aborigine in Australia (1989): 181–82.

4See Judith Wright, “The Moving Image,” in Wright, Collected Poems, 1942–1970 (1971;
Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1975): 8, 15–16.
152 WRITING THE NATION ]

Healy’s view is that “The radical reconstitution of the world in Judith

Wright’s poetry is intensified in White […]. White sent his shoots of enquiry
into the past and into contemporary Australian society. He opened impor-
tant windows on both.” Healy’s reading of the White texts is full of remark-
able insights: he notes, in Voss, the structuring of “a pattern of meeting and
rejection” so that the overall sense is of the Aborigines’ occupation of “free
and determined space”; “the construction of the sense of a different culture
– the cave paintings, the burial platforms, the myth of the Great Snake […].”
It is difficult, therefore, to agree with the oddly contradictory view he arti-
culates later:
[…] they reside in the autochthony of a pre-reflective world which is not avail-
able to Voss himself or to the issues which concerned White in writing the
novel. They inhabit in the novel, a world without consciousness and one that is
of limited value to the scheme of the book. That scheme places a considerable
value on consciousness, on the filling of a void, on the articulating of a
universe.5

He sees the novel as primarily about the exploration of consciousness –

from that of Voss to the least important character such as Willie Pringle –
and concludes that “the Aborigines as a collective presence have little to say
in these explorations of consciousness.” He makes an exception in the case
of Jackie:
Jackie carries with him, whether he likes it or not, the burden of a new con-
sciousness. He has contracted this from his association with the visionary
white man who has sowed a certain magic an obtrusive possession into the
autochthonous world of the Aborigine […]. There is no return for him – to
the tribe, to Jildra, or to the countrymen of Voss […]. Jackie has become a
Seer […].

Jackie is a prefiguring of Alf Dubbo the artist-figure in Riders in the Chariot,

who is allotted the task of imposing unity and meaning on the experience of
the diverse group of protagonists. In assigning this privileged position to the
Aboriginal figure, Healy believes White’s novel marks “the highest point in
European consciousness of the Aborigine in Australian literature.” 6

5 J.J. Healy, Literature and the Aborigine, 204.

6 J.J. Healy, “Rehabilitation and Transcendence: Wright, White,” in Healy, Literature and
the Aborigine in Australia (1989): 186–205.
] Conclusion 153

In tracing the treatment of this theme of the Aborigine, Healy reveals

limitations in his assessments of other literary figures, too. For example, his
enthusiastic assessment of Katharine Susannah Prichard seems oblivious to,
or tacitly indulgent towards, the deep-seated ambivalence that is indubitably
part of the gaze she turns upon the Aborigine. He is moved by the “poetry”
of the novel Coonardoo and sees it as “a celebration of Aboriginal Australia,”
while bypassing some of the reservations she shares with her more con-
servative contemporaries’ attitudes to race in the 1930s.7 To critique each of
Healy’s studies in this way would require another book. It should be enough
to acknowledge Healey’s general contribution here, while pointing out the
need for more extended studies of several of the individual writers he has
commented on. His perception of the relationship between American and
Australian literature and the analogy of the trussed-up black giant on which
their societies are founded also need to be qualified; the Aborigines’ pre-
dicament is the more agonistic, in that they were the original owners of the
land; the American blacks were like the whites, later (coerced) arrivals in the
land. Overall, Healy’s book deserves praise for its pioneering work and the
heightening of awareness that it has undoubtedly effected in relation to its
important theme.
In a book described as offering “a radical new assessment of Australian
literature from a postcolonial perspective” and involving the highlighting of
Aboriginal issues and themes in order to counterpoint the dominant white
male bias characteristic of most accounts of Australian culture, Bob Hodge
and Vijay Mishra on several occasions take account of White’s work. Un-
fortunately, there is no sustained analysis of the three relevant works, which,
given the focus of their study, could have been of considerable interest.
Their discussion of Voss seems more centred on the handling of the explorer
theme; the Aboriginal figure is hardly a motif of interest. Surprisingly, too,
there is no comment on A Fringe of Leaves, the other work in which the
Aboriginal world is so important. There is some interesting commentary on
the structural complexity of Riders in the Chariot:
In spite of the metaphysical resonance, White is concerned to construct a speci-
fically Australian identity […] the riders represent the four strands that construct

7 J.J. Healy, “Recovery: Prichard,” in Healy, Literature and the Aborigine in Australia

(1989): 138–53.
154 WRITING THE NATION ]

an identity which is irreducibly compound: the Aboriginal Australian, the Aus-

tralian born, the immigrant from the Mother Country and the refugee.8

Their view is that “Alf Dubbo is constructed as an archetype rather than as

an Aborigine […] outside the domain of the real,” but, while allowing for the
complexity of the construction of the characters from a “double perspec-
tive”: i.e. projecting a metaphysical significance as well as suggesting acute
social observation, they believe that “Aborigines can rightly object to the
authenticity of Dubbo as the carrier of their social meaning.” They end with
a quotation from Mudrooroo Narogin: “He’s not a bloody Aborigine.” The
‘authenticity’ of this figure and indeed the issue of authenticity itself remain
debatable, as Gareth Griffiths has pointed out, but the significance accorded
the figure of the Aborigine in this work is acknowledged.9 Dubbo emerges as
the final interpreter of the narrative’s events; the prophet/artist whose role
establishes a conviction of the importance of the indigene in the narrative of
the nation. In Hodge’s and Mishra’s appraisal, too, the surprising omission
of A Fringe of Leaves means, inevitably, that White’s contribution is not ade-
quately considered. Other comments concerning White’s dealings with
Leonie Kramer seem something of a distraction, and in any case it is difficult
to agree with their view that her “criticism has helped promote White’s lite-
rary reputation.” (In this connection, one needs to recall Dorothy Green’s
comment on Kramer’s reaction to White’s work being like that of “a tone-
deaf critic attempting to appreciate a piece of music.”10)
Kay Schaffer’s work on A Fringe of Leaves has been extensively discussed
in the relevant chapter in this study. Hers is primarily a feminist perspective,
and while she does acknowledge the complex construction of the female
protagonist, in comparison with that in other works exploiting the Fraser
materials, she returns to the affirmation that finally White adheres to the
masculinist biases that underpin the construction of Ellen/Eliza as a seduc-
tive female calculatedly using her femininity as a means of ensuring her sur-
vival. The innovative, even visionary mode in which she is also constructed
as incipient indigene does not attract comment. There is some discussion of

8 Vijay Mishra & Bob Hodge, The Dark Side of the Dream, 62.
9 Gareth Griffiths, “The Myth of Authenticity: Representation, Discourse and Social
Practice,” in De-Scribing Empire: Post-Colonialism and Textuality, ed. Chris Tiffin & Alan Law-
son (London: Routledge, 1994): 70–85.
10 Dorothy Green, “The Edge of Error,” Quadrant 17.5–6 (November–December

1973): 36–47.
] Conclusion 155

the idea that the Aborigine is associated with the realm of the sacred, but this
is less convincingly worked out and seems contradicted occasionally by other
comments on the innate savagery of the indigenous world.
A number of book-length studies of Australian culture/literature have
featured briefer accounts of the Aboriginal motif in White’s work. In a wide-
ranging book designed “as a response to our collective cultural amnesia,”
Janeen Webb and Andrew Enstice trace how racism “has manifested itself in
Australian writing in various forms”:
The racism against Aboriginal communities was part guilt, part defence, part
aggression, with white landtakers seeking to legitimise their position and trans-
ferring blame for their actions onto Aboriginal ‘savages.’ […]. From the very
first contact between European explorers and indigenous Australians, ‘natives’
were observed, captured, examined, scrubbed, clothed, kept as pets and kept as
slaves. Very rarely were they treated as fellow human beings. Racial equality was
for a long period of our shared history, almost literally unthinkable.11

The book ranges across popular writing as well as more canonical works
dealing not only with attitudes to Aborigines but also, more recently, to
Asian migrants in Australia. In the penultimate chapter, “Cultural Recon-
ciliation,” Patrick White and Judith Wright are given credit for their support
of Aboriginal issues. There is no attempt to analyse White’s work in any
depth. There is a summary statement to the effect that his treatment of
Aborigines “played an important part in several books” and that, unlike early
Australian writing’s caricaturizing of the Aboriginal people as savages,
White’s Aborigines “are as real as his other fictional characters.”12 While the
nature of this particular project does not permit more detailed analysis, this
pronouncement implies some recognition of White’s subverting of orientalist
discourse.
Simon During’s slender monograph on Patrick White is billed as a “pio-
neering work” which uses “recent developments in literary and cultural
theory to elucidate Patrick White’s life and work.”13 Peter Craven’s sharp
critique of During’s approach should not be dismissed as simply the over-

11 Janeen Webb & Andrew Enstice, “Introduction” to Aliens and Savages: Fiction, Politics
and Prejudice in Australia (Sydney: HarperCollins, 1998): 2.
12 Webb & Enstice, “Introduction” to Aliens and Savages, 2.

13 Simon During, Patrick White (Melbourne: Oxford U P , 1966).

156 WRITING THE NATION ]

reaction of a dedicated admirer of White’s work.14 During sees White as a

“precursor to postcolonialism,” but what that statement implies remains un-
clear. The work is threaded through with contradictions, often within the
same paragraph and even within the same sentence.
Besides the constant contradictions, a proclivity to discussing the ‘teller’
rather than the ‘tale’ is a recurrent problem with During’s study. His analyses
remain thinly substantiated, if at all, and irritatingly confusing. To cite just
one of many examples: in his discussion of Voss, During states that the writ-
ing “confidently glides over an obvious lack of knowledge about Aboriginal
life-ways.” As evidence, he cites the scene of Dugald’s encounter with the
black women diving for lily-roots after he leaves Voss’s expedition, seeing it
as evocative of “hundreds of colonial soft-core descriptions of ‘native’ wo-
men’s nakedness.” He does not cite a single example of the alleged “hun-
dreds” of other such ‘colonial’ descriptions of native women. White’s writing
actually shows considerable acquaintance with Aboriginal ways, as the brief
account of Dugald’s wandering in the desert shows (and the comments of
other serious researchers which have been cited in this study attest):
Sometimes the old man would jump down at the butt of certain trees, and dig
until he reached the roots, and break them open, and suck out the water. […].
The old man killed and ate goannas. He ate a small dun-coloured rat. […] When
the horse lay down and died, […] the black was not unduly concerned. Before
abandoning the dead horse, he cut out the tongue and ate it. […] in time he
arrived at good country of grass and water. (V. 218–19)

It is in this “good country” that the encounter with the women diving for lily
roots occurs. One detail mentions the women’s nakedness as they are per-
ceived through the old man Dugald’s eyes. There is no suggestion of voyeur-
istic pleasure; it is registered simply as a descriptive detail, with a kind of
aesthetic pleasure in the contrast between the black breasts and the white
cups of the lilies. He is simply content at their having received him as one of
their tribe: ‘‘laughing and chattering with him as he squatted by the water’s
edge, watching their hair tangle with the stalks of lilies, and black breasts
jostle the white cups” (V. 219). The recording consciousness next moves to
focus on the “strong young huntsmen of the tribe,” and thence moves out

14 See Peter Craven, “The kingdom of correct usage is elsewhere,” Australian Book Re-

view (April 1996): 36–41. See also Leonard’s comment on Craven in John Stuart Leonard,
“Craven on During, During on White,” Meanjin 55.2 (1996): 267–75.
] Conclusion 157

of Dugald’s viewpoint to the authorial recording of the destruction of the

letters which is the main interest of this segment of the narrative. Dugald
divests himself of the last influence of the whites, in scattering their letters to
the winds and shedding his tattered swallowtail coat.
Further, During’s comment on A Fringe of Leaves is prefaced by the infor-
mation that the anthropologist White had consulted could find “no record of
Fraser Island Aboriginal rituals so White’s Aborigines simply fit into the nar-
rative to meet Ellen’s spiritual needs.” No note is attached to this statement
to establish who the anthropologist was, when the event occurred etc. In
fact, White’s interest in Fraser Island was such that he actually financed the
first investigation of the archaeological resources of the island.15 David Marr
also records that it was as part of his research for this novel that White also
met and spoke with Reeves, his first meeting with a person of Aboriginal
descent and a member of the original Badtjala people of Fraser Island.
During declares that the construction of indigenous peoples as “belonging
more to nature than to humanity has helped discount their prior claims to
the country” and he sees White’s strategies as belonging also to this category
of representation, which he then dismisses as an example of “colonial dis-
course.” The present study has been concerned with establishing the very
reverse of that thesis.
More examples of disconnected and irrelevant statements abound. The
motif of cannibalism is discussed:
Australia’s lack of public ceremonies, its failure to recognize tragic transgressive
drives, and hence its fragmentation. But paradoxically, White’s critique of mod-
ern Australia made it harder for him to imagine pre-contact Aboriginal society
except in the historically most loaded of all Western primitivist categories – the
cannibal.’16

The succeeding quotation from an essay on festival is presumably designed

to establish this point but registers as tangential, if not totally irrelevant, to
the point being made. The motif of cannibalism, in any case, surfaces in only
one of the three novels in which the indigenous figure appears, A Fringe of
Leaves. Moreover, a reference to an Australian anthropological study such as
the Berndts’ work would have had more relevance in directing attention to

15 See Ian McNiven, “Shipwreck Saga as archaeological text: Recontructing Fraser

Island’s Aboriginal Past,” in Constructions of Colonialism, 38.
16 Simon During, Patrick White, 33.
158 WRITING THE NATION ]

the nature and extent of such practices in Aboriginal societies.17 During’s dis-
cussion of Riders in the Chariot continues the proliferation of irrelevant specu-
lation and unverified assumptions. He traces the novel’s genesis to White’s
“becoming influenced with that form of spiritual syncretism in which all re-
ligious/mystical traditions were reduced to a single ‘perennial philosophy’.”
He cites Julian Huxley’s book along with the re-publication of Jung’s work as
events that helped to popularize the syncretist movement of the 1950s. No
details of Huxley’s books, or the Jung publications, or indeed of the move-
ment itself are provided, nor, indeed, is there evidence cited to establish that
White had ever subscribed to such ideas. He claims that White represents
Aborigines as “finally another outsider group, but one without surviving tra-
ditions, compelled at best to universal spiritual experiences.” White’s con-
struction of the Aborigines establishes them, rather, as an autonomous
people, not passive victims who collapsed without protest before the irresis-
tible superiority of the whites; the indigene as a substantial presence needs to
be negotiated in any narrative of the nation.
Overall, During seems distracted by a preconceived notion that White’s
texts reflect the author’s homo-erotic sexuality and that “many of his texts
[…] attain some of their most powerful effects from being written in and
about the closet.” Along with this, he seems more concerned to destabilize
what he sees as the iconic status of such a writer as White than to fulfil the
responsibilities involved in his promise to attempt a ‘postcolonial’ approach
to these works. Too much of what is relevant to such a perspective is simply
bypassed.

Goldie’s ‘commodities’
The Canadian critic Terry Goldie has made a significant contribution to the
debate relating to the indigene in the context of settler cultures. In his refer-
ences to the work of Patrick White as being the most “resonant in the lite-
rature of the indigene,” he has explored – in his comparison of White’s work
with that of the Canadian writer Rudy Wiebe – the modalities operative in
their construction of narratives where a quest for psychic wholeness and the
path to nationhood emerge as a synonymous progression. While the main
thrust of Goldie’s comparison of Wiebe and White is broadly admissible, a
close analysis of White’s construction of the Aboriginal figures in his novels

17 Ronald M. Berndt & Catherine H. Berndt, The World of the First Australians, 467–70.
] Conclusion 159

does not really allow for a simple application of Goldie’s central thesis that
European writers’ constructions of the Aboriginal figure are always con-
strained by the delineation of certain inevitable characteristics. He terms
these features “basic commodities: sex, violence, orality, mysticism and the
prehistoric.”18
Attempting to trace the applicability of these characteristics to the indige-
nous figures in White’s novels involves more than a degree of strain. This
reinforces the central thesis of my own study – that the representation of the
indigene in White’s work subverts the construct of the stereotypical Other of
colonialist narrative. Goldie’s point is that no construction of the indigene in
Western discourse is possible without recourse to the invocation of these
particular ‘commodities’. The ensuing discussion should establish that, at
least with regard to the work of Patrick White, Goldie’s thesis may not be so
easily sustained. The fact is, that the Aboriginal figures in each of White’s
three texts do not conform to these characteristics. More often than not,
these ‘basic commodities’ will be seen to apply even more to the whites in
the texts analysed.
In Voss, the Aborigine actually emerges as an asexual being. The aged
Dugald is pictured as a “a thinking stick”; Jackie is betrothed to some young
woman of the tribe he joins later as a means of securing his allegiance, but it
is “an alliance” obviously dictated by expedience and seems sanctioned by
tribal ritual. The old man watching over Voss at the end seems to meta-
morphosize into an old woman, bestowing an aspect of androgyny on this
figure. Love and sexuality cohere around the white man and his lover Laura,
but even here, as Goldie’s own discussion concedes, in White’s construction
“sexuality is superficially limited in Voss. The small amount of personal con-
tact between Voss and Laura has no apparent physical dimension.”19 (Inci-
dentally, sexuality is much more a characteristic of the indigenous figure in
Rudy Wiebe’s work, as is apparent from Goldie’s comparative discussion.)
Sometimes this quality is displaced onto the convict figure, as in the case of
the maid Rose , made pregnant by the convict servant, Jack Slipper. Laura is
repelled by “the bodies of these servants” and is disturbed when she encoun-
ters Jack Slipper in the dark garden – obviously the place in which he has his
trysts with Rose. As far as the indigenous figures are concerned, there is a

18 Terry Goldie, Fear and Temptation, 15–17.

19 Fear and Temptation, 199.
160 WRITING THE NATION ]

quality of innocence about them, as Goldie himself notes in quoting the fol-
lowing passage:
The women were altogether hairless, for those other parts which should have
been covered had been exposed by plucking. By some perversity of inno-
cence, however, it did seem to emphasize the modesty of those who had been
plucked. (V. 204)

It is the whites who show lewdness in the ribald remarks of Turner when
confronted with the cave paintings of the kangaroo and at the first encounter
with the native women.
In A Fringe of Leaves, again there is little to suggest that sex is a dominant
preoccupation of the indigenous society. There is an interlude where the
rivalry between two women over a man ends in the death of one of the
women, but the sexual intrigues of white society seem much more tortuous
and destructive. Jack has been transported for the crime of killing his lover,
and in the grisly story he tells of his past he has even committed an act of
necrophilia. Ellen appears to be possessed of a passionate sexuality. She
seems enmeshed in guilt since girlhood because of this consciousness. It
finds its fulfilment in her attraction to her brother-in-law and later in her
surrender to Jack Chance during her sojourn with him in the wilderness. At
the end of the narrative, Ellen is poised, it seems, to embark on still another
relationship, this time with the worthy Mr Jevons. In this novel, the capacity
for sensual love is represented, finally, as possessing redemptive possibilities.
What Ellen acquires from her experience in the wilderness and the mystical
vision she experiences at the end of the novel is the recognition of the need
for self-acceptance; after all, the message she receives through her mystical
experience in the unconsecrated chapel built by the other survivor of the
shipwreck, Pilcher, is that “G O D I S L O V E ” (FL. 390).
In Riders in the Chariot, sex is more a preoccupation of the white characters.
Alf himself is the victim of the sexual predatoriness of whites, both male and
female; both the Reverend Calderon and Mrs Spice seek his sexual favours.
When he visits Mrs Khalil’s brothel, he seems to be merely tolerated there.
The prostitutes reserve their favours for the white men:
The sharp inequality between white and black was clearly shown in sexual rela-
tions. European men pursued Aboriginal women but were rarely willing to
admit publicly to their liaisons or to accept responsibility for half-caste children.
] Conclusion 161

Aboriginal men were rarely, if ever, accepted as sexual partners by European

women. Numerous writers commented on this question.20

White does go against the norm in suggesting, in A Fringe of Leaves, that Ellen
is attracted to the handsome forms of the Aboriginal men – a detail that sur-
faces repeatedly in her narrative. The black male is not presented as a highly-
sexed being, as is the norm in colonialist narrative. Fanon comments on this
in citing the attitudes to both the black and the Jew:
The Jew is feared because of his potential for acquisitiveness. ‘They’ are
everywhere […]. ‘They’ control everything […]. As for the Negroes they have
tremendous sexual powers. What do you expect, with all the freedom they have
in their jungles […] they will flood us with little mulattos.21

It is expressly stated in White’s novel, however, that

The men on the other hand paid little attention to what they must have decided
on the beach was no more than a female of an unprepossessing colour. As
males they lounged about the camp, conversing, mending weapons, and scratch-
ing themselves. (FL. 245).

This is in contrast to so many other versions of Eliza’s narrative which ex-

ploit the salacious suggestions of her story and the implications of the sexual
appetites of the “savages.” It was part of the interest of her tale that was
deliberately exploited in the varied versions of it that circulated in the media
of the time, the broadsheets and posters. Even in the 1960s, Michael Ondaa-
tje’s poem based on the Nolan paintings is saturated with images of sexual
assault and violence which shows the adherence to the stereotype of sex tra-
ditionally associated with the indigene.22
Violence, which Goldie identifies as one of the commodities associated
with the indigene, is certainly one aspect of the indigenous figure in Voss.
Nevertheless, here as also in A Fringe of Leaves, the violence is the result of
the action of the whites’ intrusion into black territory. The blacks follow the
passage of the expedition deeper and deeper into black territory. Jackie’s kill-
ing of Voss with the knife given him by the explorer underlines the sugges-
tion that the violence is something that the white man brings on himself, the

20 Henry Reynolds, “Aborigines in White Society: Citizens or Outcasts?” in Dis-

possession, 146.
21 Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 116–17.

22 Michael Ondaatje, the man with seven toes (Toronto: Coach House, 1969).
162 WRITING THE NATION ]

result of his own actions. The mention of Judd’s sufferings under the penal
system underline the sense of an all-pervasive violence of the whites towards
their own people which is much more emphasized in A Fringe of Leaves. The
cruelties inherent in the convict system taint the entire white society. One of
the first encounters Ellen and Austin have on their arrival in Australia is with
the chain-gang. The final judgment on white society is reflected in Chance’s
decision to return to the wilderness rather than trust himself to the compas-
sion of white society. What of the practice of cannibalism, that act of
ultimate Otherness? As the discussion in the chapter on A Fringe of Leaves
establishes, the practice of cannibalism by the blacks is presented less as an
act of brutality than as part of a communal ritual. It is its occurrence among
the whites that appears the more reprehensible, since the whites devour their
fellows in order to satiate the brute needs of hunger.
It is in Riders in the Chariot that the contrast with the capacity for violence
in the white world is most evocatively foregrounded. Alf Dubbo is shown to
react with angry violence when Hannah sells his pictures without his knowl-
edge; he almost throttles the prostitute. Later he calms down and appears to
accept her pleading, although he leaves her house shortly after. Otherwise.
there is little violence about Alf. In fact, his compassion for Himmelfarb
counterbalances the extreme violence of the whites in the ‘crucifixion’ scene.
On the domestic level, there is the gratuitous violence to which Norbert
Hare subjects his wife and his daughter or the petty but nonetheless vicious
cruelty of Mrs Jolley’s bullying of the half-crazed Miss Hare, and she and her
friend Mrs Flack connive to incite the attack on the Jew. Most overwhelming
is the embedded account of one of the most sustained acts of violence and
cruelty in the history of the human race, the Nazi persecution of the Jews.
This is in the narrative of Himmelfarb, which runs for almost a quarter of
the novel. The cruelty to which both Jew and black have been subjected his-
torically (referred to by Fanon and mentioned in the discussion of this text
earlier in this study) are crimes in the history of white civilization which can
never be minimized; in Riders in the Chariot, White brings the two catastrophic
processes together. Nothing in the (pre)history of Aboriginal behaviour can
be compared with the magnitude of these crimes the white man has commit-
ted against humanity.
The commodity of orality is what White tends to invoke habitually as
associated with the indigene. One aspect of that orality of the indigene is
apparent in the manner in which the blacks in Voss show blithe disregard for
the letters of the whites, as shown in Dugald’s careless destruction of the
] Conclusion 163

letters entrusted to him by Voss. Their mode of expression is their chanting.

Their voices are heard at the end of the narrative as an expression of worship
with the appearance of the comet, a manifestation of Kunapipi, the Great
Snake, the deity they worship:
The singing, as monotonous as grey earth, as grey wood, rose in sudden spasms
of passion, to die down, down, as the charcoal lying. The voices of dust would
die right away. To rise and sing. One voice, alone, would put on the feathers of
parakeets in gay tufts of song. The big, lumbering pelican voices would spread
slower wings. (V. 377)

At the death of the poet Le Mesurier, the writer figure in the novel, the
blacks chant their song of ridicule of the white man:
“White maggots are drying up,
White maggots are drying up...”
(V. 389)

The blacks’ spirituality expresses itself in Voss in the chanting of their

prayers, though often, in their confrontation with the white man, their most
impressive quality appears to be their silence. In A Fringe of Leaves, Ellen also
notes their chanting as a mode of worship (248–50). This aspect of orality
when associated with the white figure is used to underline a potential affinity
with the indigene. All of the white persons who seem to advance along the
path towards indigeneity show this lack of value for books and reading. So
Voss’s bursting into song in the desert may be regarded as a quality that
aligns him with the blacks. He also has a distrust of writing, appearing almost
afraid to read the book in which the poet Le Mesurier inscribed his thoughts.
In A Fringe of Leaves, Ellen is quite swept away at the corroboree into the
rhythms of the singing and the dancing, and the scene becomes interfused
with her earlier memories of her girlhood on the Cornish farm:
White-ribbed men were stamping and howling the other side of the fiery hedges
[…].
The rows of women swayed in time with darkness, slapping their thighs […].
Ellen Gluyas swayed with them […]. She was again dancing as they carried in
‘the neck! the neck!’ at harvest […]. (FL. 283)

Ellen herself, like Voss in the earlier novel, shares with the indigene a quality
of orality. Ellen finds her husband’s preoccupation with reading and books
difficult to understand, and his return to the cabin to secure his copy of Vir-
gil at the time of the ship’s disaster is totally incomprehensible to her. When
164 WRITING THE NATION ]

she and Jack are making their way through the wilderness, Ellen responds to
his request to her to sing and although she affirms, “I was never musically
inclined,” complies (FL. 304), with a song that picks up the theme of love
and deceit (applying to the past of both Jack and Ellen as well as to the
relationship developing between them), and then a nursery rhyme, “in a low,
shamed, because unmusical voice.” Jack presently contributes with his own
unique ‘orality’, his imitation of birdcalls:
Presently he began to demonstrate his talent. […] the sound spilled and
glowed around them […]. In spite of her exhausted blood and torn feet, every-
thing in fact which might have disposed her to melancholy, she was throbbing
with a silent cheerfulness; […]. (FL. 305)

The other convict figure (and also a possible candidate for the status of
white indigene), Judd, cannot read. The motif of orality may thus be held to
link the convict to the Aboriginal world and enhance their aspect as incipient
indigenes.
In Riders in the Chariot, however, the Aboriginal figure again departs from
the stereotype, in that he is represented as seeking after knowledge through
books and reading despite the fact that he feels he has no particular penchant
for such pursuits. It is obviously part of the white inheritance, which is also
part of his subjectivity. The dominating vision of the Chariot is first en-
countered in a book belonging to his white benefactress, Emily Pask (RC.
344–45). Reading is not easy for him, but he is drawn to the public library in
Sydney (RC. 367–68). The habit of reading grows on him, and after he
leaves Hannah’s place he continues to read, “because of a rage to arrive at
understanding” (RC. 397). He reads the Bible and also buys art books as well
as the Gospels. Finally, it is the finding of a copy of the Bible left open at the
vision of Ezekiel that serves as a bonding experience between himself and
the Jew Himmelfarb (RC. 379).
Interestingly, the English migrant, the washer-woman Mrs Godbold, also
exhibits this trait of ‘orality’. The religious hymns which she sings all the time
are her way of keeping in touch with her own vision of transcendence,
enabling her to survive the frustrations of her own life. It is the first quality
that is mentioned in the reader’s introduction to this character:

Mrs Godbold liked to sing as she ironed […]. She had a rich, but rather
trembly, mezzo voice, which her daughter Else once said reminded her of melt-
ing chocolate. […].
] Conclusion 165

Mrs Godbold preferred to treat of death, and judgment, and the future life.
Her favourite was:
I woke, the dungeon filled with light,
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.
(RC. 245)

It seems the very shed where she dwells becomes transformed: “the light in
Godbold’s shed almost always assisted the singer’s words. Great blades of
fiery light would slash the clouds of cotton-wool, […]. The woman in the
apron would become the angel of solid light” (RC. 246).
Dampier, when he first made his report of his encounter with the native
Australians, “the miserablest People in the world,” and noted their benighted
physical condition, deprived as they were of all that the European world
regarded as the most basic of material necessities, also added a detail that
suggested their spiritual deprivation: “I did not perceive that they did wor-
ship anything.”23 In all of the foregoing discussion of the ‘orality’ of the indi-
gene, it is apparent that his singing or chanting has a religious aspect in both
Voss and A Fringe of Leaves. In Riders in the Chariot, Alf Dubbo, the Aboriginal
figure, because of his adoption into the European way of life in early youth,
has no strong ties with the land and therefore with Aboriginal spirituality.
Yet he has steadily resisted the influence of his guardians to push him to-
wards acceptance of Christianity, though he has acquired some knowledge of
its doctrines. He knows enough of Christian teaching to realize how little the
tenets of their faith mean to the Christians he has encountered. Nevertheless,
his encounters with the Jew, Mrs Godbold, and Miss Hare push him towards
acquiring a degree of understanding and acceptance of the central mysteries
of the Christian faith.
In all of White’s texts, concerned as they often are with spiritual experi-
ence, the religious awareness of the white protagonists is a major theme. In
all three texts, the protagonists – Voss and Laura in Voss; Ellen in A Fringe of
Leaves; Mrs Godbold, Miss Hare, Himmelfarb in Riders in the Chariot – are all
sharers in what may be described as a religious view of the world, if religion
is defined broadly, as by William James, as “the belief that there is an unseen
order and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves

23 See Richard White, “Terra Australis Incognita,” in Inventing Australia, 3.

166 WRITING THE NATION ]

thereto.”24 Several of these characters also experience moments of what can

only be described as mystical insight.
Finally, with regard to the ‘commodity’ designated the ‘prehistoric’: i.e. the
representation of the indigene as belonging always within a past age, which is
constructed as ‘golden’, both in Voss and A Fringe of Leaves the Aborigines
belong to the time described by historians as the period of the First Encoun-
ter. They appear to have no previous knowledge of the whites and may be
regarded as belonging to a ‘prehistoric’ phase. There is no attempt, however,
to construct this as a kind of golden age: the privations of their lives, the
struggle for survival, the harshness of Nature are evoked with considerable
sharpness, particularly in A Fringe of Leaves. Alf Dubbo in Riders in the Chariot,
however, belongs very much to a contemporary context. He is drawn more
to the life of town and city, and has only the vaguest memory of his life
among the ex-urban fringe-dwelling Aboriginal group from which he comes
originally. The fringe-dwelling Aborigine is, in any event, essentially a con-
temporary phenomenon, and Dubbo’s fate replicates the consequences of
the white conquest for many Aborigines.
In thus reversing some of the stereotypical attributes which Goldie has
identified as the “commodities” attached to the field of the indigene, White
signals the nature of his project – no less than reversing the orientalist stereo-
type of the indigene as Other. If one characteristic of colonialist writing has
been to project onto the non-white Other all the feared impulses to violence
and brutality of the white man’s own nature, it is clearly apparent that con-
struction of the indigene in these texts refuses these simplifications and
undercuts the orientalist construction of the European as the source of all
virtue and light and the non-European (usually) as his depraved Other.
(Goldie does make the point that these attributes are operative even in a con-
text where the motive may be to present a notion of indigene superiority to
the white alien.) Virtue and vice are the prerogatives of neither the one nor
the other; what emerges is the imperfect humanity of both.
This study has endeavoured to demonstrate, in the texts examined, a
patterning in the representation of the indigenous figures which work to-
wards re-inventing the indigene as a being endowed with dignity and a capa-
city to affirm his integrity against the depredations of the European on-
slaught. Well before the publication of such work as that of the historian

24 William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Longman’s Green,
1928): 53.
] Conclusion 167

Henry Reynolds and research by anthropologists like the Berndts, a creative

writer has constructed the image of a black world aware of its own integrity
and resentful of the aggression of the white imperialists; a writer has
explored, with integrity and understanding, aspects of the first encounter
and, indeed, of the much later outcome of that encounter.25

White’s personal interest in the Aborigine

It may be held by some that the extent of White’s personal knowledge of
Aborigines and involvement with Aboriginal issues is not strictly relevant to
the discussion of the texts. Yet the writer’s personal history can have a re-
levance in the same manner that, as Said declares in the “Introduction” to
Orientalism, it is relevant for critics to declare their speaking positions, “the
inventory of traces” that may have an influence on their approaches to the
text that is being commented on.26 Further, this information can add to the
network of affiliations enhancing the reader’s appreciation of the text and
project a sense of its embeddedness in the world from which it arises.
One episode from White’s life experience (recorded in his autobiography)
provides a striking parallel to similar incidents recalled by Fanon in Black
Skin, White Masks, and one constructed as an episode in the life of the pro-
tagonist in Mudrooroo’s first novel, Wild Cat Falling. White’s warmest feel-
ings as a child were reserved for the servants of the household, even over the
formal claims of his family. One of these servants was Solomon Rakooka, a
Solomon Islander. White writes of his childhood affection for the man:
I grew to love Sol for mystical as well as materialistic reasons. He used to fetch
me from the kindergarten where I had started spending my mornings. No other
child could boast of a black attendant, and on the way home, Sol would buy me
forbidden sweets […]. Neither of us ever mentioned the sweets to those who
might disapprove. It was our tangible secret […].27

The child is so upset when his mother, instead of Solomon, calls for him one
morning that he spits in her face. He speaks of the ‘mystical tie’ with Solo-
mon as deriving from his being allowed to look through a collection of

25 See James Belich’s assessment of the importance of Reynolds’ work in “Black Peace,
Black War,” Meanjin 54.4 (1995): 710–15.
26 Edward Said, “Introduction” to Orientalism, 25.

27 Patrick White, Flaws in the Glass: A Self-Portrait (London: Jonathan Cape 1981): 22–23

(my emphasis).
168 WRITING THE NATION ]

objects he keeps in a small box, treasures collected from the time when
Solomon used to be a sailor:
[…] a tobacco pouch with twist top and the head and torso of an Indian as
decoration […] a vicious–looking knife […]. I don’t think anything much was
said by either of us. Sol would be smoking his pipe while I wheezed and
dreamed […].
Sol had to leave eventually. He was a drunk […]. When he left we all cried
[…]. None of the gardeners who followed Sol had his panache. Some of them
were drunks too, but burnt-out Irish ones, others of an impenetrable Anglo-
Saxon pseudo-sobriety […].28

The episodes from Fanon and Mudrooroo are illustrative of the burden of
blackness in the experience of the black man. These are parallelled and yet
reversed by the incident recalled by White from his own childhood. The
first-mentioned episodes encapsulate a white child’s instinctive rejection of a
black man for no other reason than his colour; the episode from White’s
autobiography encapsulates the strength of affection that binds a white child
to a black man, a bond founded on shared interests and trust. The white
child even rejects his mother for the black man where the child in the earlier-
recounted episodes turns to the mother figure for protection from the fear-
some black man.
There is thus considerable justification in assessing the writer’s personal
interest in the Aboriginal question, if only as a marker of the changing socio-
political context that makes the whole question of the indigene an issue of
conscience for the contemporary writer, artist, critic, and intellectual. Marr
remarks that White had not actually met with an Aborigine till he went out to
Fraser Island, at the age of forty-nine, to meet Wilf Reeves as part of his
preparation for writing A Fringe of Leaves.29 His preparation for writing this
novel involved considerable serious research. Marr remarks that the real-life
character Reeves could have been the model for Alf Dubbo. White’s success
in the construction of this figure suggests a degree of imaginative involve-
ment that was even more important perhaps than the formal research that
was also part of his preparation.
Marr notes that, even as a jackaroo on his uncle’s station, White was in-
sulated from any meeting with Aborigines:

28 Flaws in the Glass, 23.

29 David Marr, Patrick White, A Life, 381.
] Conclusion 169

Walgett was not much of a town, a grid of weatherboard houses on stumps, a

courthouse and seven or eight pubs, built by the river. Walgett was white.
Aborigines of many tribes lived at the mission and in humpies along the river
bed but they were not allowed into town, unless they were going on an errand.
The rule was, straight in and straight out, no loitering. […]. In his months at
Walgett, White did not meet an Aborigine; they were everywhere but they did
not cross his path.30

An interest in Aboriginal issues was consistently apparent in White’s increas-

ing involvement in public life, in his later years. In the collection of his
speeches and letters entitled Patrick White Speaks, the allusions are plentiful
enough. In almost every major speech of his career, there is a deeply embed-
ded awareness of Aboriginal issues. In 1973, on the occasion of his being
selected unanimously as Australian of the Year, he named at least three other
eminent Australians with whom he felt he would like to share the award.
One of these was Manning Clark, the historian, for his reminding Australians
that the problems of the nineteenth century were still with us; among them
“that apparently insoluble problem of what to do about the Aborigines we
dispossessed.”31
In 1981, at a gathering of writers designed to express support for a cam-
paign against nuclear armament, he concluded a prayer for nuclear peace
with a clause expressing the following sentiment: “I pray that we may act
honourably at home and abroad; that our Aborigines receive the justice
owing to them; that black and white live together in harmony.”32 In 1982, his
“Letter to Humanity,” on the dangers of the nuclear threat, again carried
special reference to Aborigines and the fact that they were particularly vul-
nerable in the present context. In August of 1984 he refers, for the first time,
to the possibility of white Australians gaining something in the way of posi-
tive knowledge from black Australians. The statement reveals a surprising
degree of acquaintance with Aboriginal beliefs:
The Australian Aborigines, from whose metaphysics we can learn so much,
have a saying, ‘He who loses his dreaming is lost’. As I understand, ‘dreaming’
can be interpreted as his links with the past, his spirit life, his connections with
tree, rock, landscape, his totems, in more sophisticated terms, his spirituality,
God (however much it may shock some of us to hear that word, an affront to

30 Patrick White, A Life, 108.

31 Patrick White, “Australian of the Year” (1974), in Patrick White Speaks, 47.
32 White, “Imagining the Real” (1986), in Patrick White Speaks, 181.
170 WRITING THE NATION ]

our intellectuality)’. As I see it, loss of faith, our ‘dreaming’, is the prime disaster
which has overtaken most of the world in the latter part of the twentieth
century.33

Among the few “people of integrity” who will continue to speak out against
such issues as the mining of uranium he mentions Faith Bandler as “one of
the most persuasive spokeswomen for the black people of Australia, who
understands from personal experience that black and white can be brought
together in peace and amity.” Expressing the hope that Australia will deal
honestly with the issue of uranium mining, he returns again to the cause of
the Aborigines:
It may give us back our ‘Dreaming’, our faith: as the Aborigines see it, in soil
and country and spirit life; […]. From murdering the Aborigine after our take-
over of this continent, then initiating him into alcohol, and passing on venereal
diseases and tuberculosis, we have now dispensed the deadlier disease which
comes from the lust for uranium money. From now on it is our duty to start
exorcising hate and suspicion; to unite – all of us – in creating faith in life and
humankind.34

Most eloquent perhaps of all these public pronouncements was the state-
ment issued for Australia Day 1988, the celebration of the Bicentenary. He
had refused to have any new work published in that year:
The whole idea of the Bicentenary has been troubling me for some time.
There was too little I could feel proud of in our past. Even less in our present
[…]. More than anything, it was the need for justice for the Aborigines which
put me against the Bi. Very little has been done to give them a sense of security
in the country we invaded. In spite of a lot of last-minute face-saving claptrap
from the Prime Minister […]. Aborigines may not be shot and poisoned as they
were in the early days of colonisation, but there are subtler ways of disposing of
them. They can be induced to take their own lives by the psychic torments they
undergo in police cells. It’s usually put down to drugs or drinks […] they learnt
it from the whites. [...] In my boyhood when I used to go there to my uncle’s
sheep station on the Barwon, and he drove me in his buggy past the shanties on
the outskirts of town, he said, ‘There’s nothing you can do for these people.’ I
was fond of my uncle, so I dismissed the blacks from mind till years after, I
started to think – and met numbers of impressive black leaders –as well as girls
and young men graduating as teachers – and through involvement with the

33 “In This World of Hypocrisy and Cynicism” (1984), in Patrick White Speaks, 154.
34 “In This World of Hypocrisy and Cynicism,” 158.
] Conclusion 171

Aboriginal Islander Dance Company. The Aborigines produce dazzling per-

forming artists and painters.35

He demonstrated his personal feelings against the celebrations of the Bicen-

tenary by resolving that he would have no work of his published or per-
formed during “the nauseating Bi.” He had decided he would boycott the
festivities: “I hope I am dead before 1988 when we are supposed to cele-
brate our emptiness in a great shower of bullshit.”36 Marr records how White
hoisted two flags, the black and red Aboriginal flag and the blue and white
Eureka cross (which some Republicans believe should be the national flag), a
fortnight before the day. These were stolen before the day he was to be
interviewed for national television, but he made sure they were replaced.
Beneath the flags, White spoke for those who wanted justice, integrity, and
peace before celebrations: “Circuses don’t solve serious problems. When the
tents are taken down, we’ll be left with the dark, the emptiness.”37
While some critics have rejected the facility with which Marr connected
aspects of the life of the novelist to the works, there can be little doubt that
his splendid biography filled out the human figure of the writer most admi-
rably. Some gaps were perhaps inevitable in so colossal a task. The image of
White as, in his later years, a public figure interested in the burning issues of
the day is less well documented. In Marr’s edition of White’s letters, too,
there is only one mention of White’s having made a contribution to some
Aboriginal cause and only about five references to the Bicentenary.38
There are still books to be written on White and his political sympathies
and his progress from the “pointlessly parasitic” existence of a dandified
young London intellectual to the concerned writer dedicated to make his
countrymen become “a race possessed of understanding.”39 More speci-
fically on the question of writing, when asked “is it a good thing for artists to
become so political?,” White’s response was as follows:
In one way it’s bad […] but it’s also unavoidable if they don’t want to become
museum pieces, […]. I like to see any artist as classless – a seeing eye or
recording angel. […] The flow of history is what we have to face and adapt our-

35 White, “The Bicentenary” (1988), in Patrick White Speaks, 183–84.

36 David Marr, Patrick White: A Life, 632.
37 Marr, Patrick White: A Life, 634.
38 David Marr, Patrick White, Letters (Sydney: Random House, 1994).
39 Patrick White, “The Prodigal Son” (1958), in Patrick White Speaks, 17.
172 WRITING THE NATION ]

selves to. The adjustments we shall have to make may be pretty agonising. But
they will have to be made.40

In these pronouncements on the issues that have preoccupied him in his

writing, White’s perceptions coincide with what Edward Said has articulated
as the primary role of the artist and the intellectual in contemporary society.
White has arraigned Australian society for its inadequacies over a range of
issues: the shallow hedonism, the restricted ambitions and sterility of sub-
urban life, the materialism, the lack of generosity, the sheer inability to love,
all of which he has castigated in so many of his works. Some have inter-
preted this as evidence of a rejection of Australia itself, but there is far too
much evidence of his deep love of the land and a sense that his anger derives
from his longing for fulfilment of that deeper potential which he also sensed
in the nation’s psyche for this negative view to be sustained.
The novels explored in this study show White’s persistent endeavour to
redress the flawed Australian attitudes of the past, and to work towards
creating “a race possessed of understanding.” This has to include the re-
covery of the possibility of a shared future for white and indigenous Aus-
tralians. This is, admittedly, but one strand in the multi-faceted tapestry of
his impressive oeuvre, but it is an important one.
Whatever the other prejudices he came to nourish, and they seem plenti-
ful from childhood on, rejection of human beings on grounds of colour or
race were not among them. The significance of his early relationship with
Solomon Rakooka re-surfaces in a somewhat unusual context several years
later in a speech given in New Zealand, where he was invited to distribute
Peace Prizes to several journalists:
Here I’m going to digress for a moment. Some of you will see it as self-indul-
gence, nostalgia, sentimentality. However it illuminates the personal link I have
with our South Pacific. When I was a child of five or six there was a Solomon
Islander working for our family in Sydney, […]. He had a boxful of treasures
from Buenos Aires and Rio which he would bring out to show to my admiring
self. He used to bring me home from kindergarten, my small white hand in his
large black spongy one as he helped me aboard the tram. He was always around
in the Douanier Rousseau garden of my childhood. We planted a mango stone
together. We watered it. We dug it up every other day to see if it had germi-
nated. It had. What happened to our mango I can’t remember. It probably died
of too much loving care from our black and white alliance. And the alliance

40 Patrick White, “State of the Colony” (1981), in Patrick White Speaks, 90–91, 92.
] Conclusion 173

broke up, destroyed by grog and prostitutes. Sol had to go. We loved him. We
all cried when he walked down the drive for the last time in his badly fitting
army boots.
I introduce this episode because it leaves me with a personal duty – my duty
to the South Pacific – like a white colonist’s duty to the Australian Aborigines –
my duty to the so-called ethnics in these days of rage from certain quarters
against the Asians – the rage in past decades against dagoes, Jewish reffos, Balts
– and the rest of those we see when we come to our senses have contributed
immeasurably to our culture.41

This reference so much later in life to the importance that Solomon had for
White in his childhood confirms the impression that the ‘Otherness’ of the
black man held no terrors for him; his child’s reaction to Sol is in marked
contrast to those of the white children remembered in Fanon’s biographical
and Mudrooroo’s fictional account.

White: The reputation

Noting the recent publication of a new bibliography of White’s works, the
reviewer comments that “homage to writing on such a scale is moving.”42
He also notes that after the lull in critical commentary that set in after
White’s death, it has appeared as “a flagship, sailing into this silent sea.”43
After the spate of books, articles and theses of the 1970s, 1980s and even
1990s, quiet seems to have descended on the once hotly contested scene of
White criticism. The sheer immensity of White’s oeuvre is forbidding
enough, but beyond this there are also the embedded ambivalences of a
highly idiosyncratic style and multi-layered texts which admit of a multiplicity
of approaches and interpretations. Besides this, the radical changes in theore-
tical bases from which texts are scrutinized today have no doubt also had
their effect.
White’s magisterial works have a Shakespearean breadth, depth, and com-
plexity that make him a writer for all seasons and indeed for all readers. My
own early study of his novels was predicated on the conviction that their dis-
tinctiveness stemmed from their capacity to project understandings of a

41 “Peace and Other Matters” (1984), in Patrick White Speaks, 170–71.

42 Brian Hubber & Vivian Smith, Patrick White: A Bibliography (Newcastle, Victoria:
Quiddler’s Press/Oak Knoll Press, 2004).
43 Laurie Hergenhan, review of Hubber & Smith, Australian Literary Studies 22.1 (2005):

116.
174 WRITING THE NATION ]

transcendental reality through a Blakean strategy of immersing readers in the

gritty materiality of the phenomenal world. The exploration of the postcolo-
nial issues in the three texts selected for study here does not go against read-
ings of the novels as concerned with religious experience; as Terry Goldie
has pointed out, and as should be clear from the foregoing discussion, the
search for individuation and the search for nation in White’s work are one.44
Within the expanding field of postcolonial studies, the oeuvre of Aus-
tralia’s pre-eminent novelist deserves to be accorded dedicated attention. In
the process of this investigation, I have experienced no need to renege on
views encapsulated in an earlier essay contextualizing White as the kind of
artist figure who, in Jungian teaching, emerges at crucial stages in a nation’s
development in order to fulfil the deepest psychic needs of his people.45 For,
in a postcolonial context – one that is the context of the writer from this
settler-culture region of the world – no less than that of the writer from the
‘Third World’, there is the need for the artist to help his nation build a sense
of itself; to contribute to the ‘narration’ of the nation.
White’s avowed purpose in his writing was the creation of a “race posses-
sed of understanding” – specifically, the Australian people.46 This intention
could be regarded as also assisting a people to develop an appreciation of
moral and metaphysical truths, an aim not incompatible with the role as-
signed the literary artist and intellectual by Said in the contemporary world:
Certainly in writing and in speaking, one’s aim is not to show everyone how
right one is but rather to try to introduce a change in the moral climate whereby
aggression is seen as such, the unjust punishment of peoples or individuals is
either prevented or given up, the recognition of […] rights […] and democratic
freedoms is established as a norm for everyone, not invidiously for a select few.
[…].
The individual does not climb a mountain or a pulpit and declaim from the
heights. Obviously you want to speak your piece where it can be heard best: and
also you want it represented in such a way as to influence with an ongoing
process, for instance, the cause of peace and justice. […].

44 Terry Goldie, “Rudy Wiebe and Patrick White,” in Fear and Temptation, 191–214.
45 Cynthia vanden Driesen, “Jung, the Artist and Society and Patrick White,” St. Mark’s
Review 119 (September 1984): 22–31. (See Appendix, below.)
46 Patrick White, “The Prodigal Son” (1958), in Patrick White Speaks, 17.
] Conclusion 175

Speaking the truth to power is no Panglossian idealism: it is carefully weigh-

ing the alternatives, picking the right one, and then intelligently representing it
where it can do the most good and cause the right change.47

Reflecting at a later period on the ideas articulated here, particularly “who or

what is a writer and intellectual,” Said concludes that the changes that have
taken place have only made the definition more difficult to pin down and
that the most central change is the necessary acknowledgment of
[…] the deepening of the unresolved tension as to whether writers and intel-
lectuals can ever be what is called non-political […]. The difficulty of the
tension for the individual writer and the intellectual has been paradoxically that
the realm of the political and the public has expanded so much as to be virtually
without borders.48

In the Jungian dispensation, White fits the paradigm of one of those creative
spirits designated by Jung as “great artists [who] come to fulfil a definite need
of the society in which they live,” in the sense of his drawing attention to the
religious void in the lives of contemporary Australians; but this need can also
be interpreted as fulfilling his people’s craving for a sense of their unique
identity – a craving perhaps even more deep-seated in a people who have
passed through the cataclysmic experience of colonialism and its aftermath.49
White took pride in the fact that he had “letters from ordinary Australians
for whom [his] writing seem[ed] to have opened a window.”50 This study
hopes to re-open lines of enquiry that can generate avenues of approach to
the broadened panorama afforded by that open window; specifically, an
understanding of the role of the indigene in the narration of the nation.

]^

47 Edward W. Said, “Speaking Truth to Power,” in Representations of the Intellectual (New

York: Random House, 1994): 100–102.

48 Edward W. Said, “The Public Role of Writers and Intellectuals,” in Humanism and

Democratic Criticism (New York: Columbia U P , 2004): 120.

49 C.G. Jung, “Psychology and Literature,” in Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul (Lon-

don: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966): 191–92.

50 Patrick White, “The Prodigal Son” (1958), in Patrick White Speaks, 17.
 Appendix

T HIS A P P E N D I X , with the title as given below, was first published

as an article in St Mark’s Review (Canberra) 119 (September 1984).
There is some need here perhaps for an explanation in appending
this early article, written in response to what almost became an obsession
with me after the completion of my doctoral study of White’s work: a need
to explain the nature of White’s curious position in the Australian literary
landscape and the love/hate relationship which seemed to exist between
him and his Australian public. Its ‘thesis’ is that White’s role in the Australian
context appears to fit that which Jung ascribes to the ‘great’ artist in relation
to his epoch: to provide a response to the deepest psychic needs of his time;
a role which can bring him into opposition with varied influences in the con-
temporary climate. This discussion does not seek to trace the application of
Jungian theory to any selected work in the manner of critics like David Tacey
in Patrick White and the Unconscious or Gordon Collier’s The Rocks and Sticks of
Words. These critics ushered in still another perspective from which White’s
rich and complex works may be explored.
Despite the dated nature of some of the references, the classic ideas of
Jung and of William James which underpin the piece, have, I believe, enabled
the article to sustain its relevance. My earlier work focuses on White’s con-
tribution to enhancing his Australian people’s awareness of a transcendental
dimension to experience, of the need for a spiritual awareness to counteract
the increasing secularism and materialism of the contemporary world. This
original thesis is not displaced but is in fact reinforced by the present study,
which traces the nascent possibilities his works also suggest for a settler
people’s deeply felt need for a mode of belonging within the adoptive land.
178 WRITING THE NATION ]

When White’s work first appeared and my earlier study was completed,
there was less sense of the religious experience, however broadly defined
(and it must be broadly defined in relation to White’s work), as being an im-
portant preoccupation in Australian writing. Subsequently, several works,
such as Veronica Brady’s A Crucible of Prophets (1981) and Elaine Lindsay’s
Rewriting God (2000) have dispelled this notion, but my thesis in this article,
that Patrick White’s position in the Australian context fits the mould of the
‘great’ writer, and his role in relation to his epoch, still retain relevance to the
present study. This is the reason for its inclusion here.
While the substance of the article has remained essentially the same as
when it was first published, the style of the references has been modified to
suit the requirements of Cross/Cultures publications.

Jung, the Artist and Society, and Patrick White

T
H I S S T U D Y falls neither into the category of literary criticism nor
into that of psychology, but into the nebulous field that appears to
lie somewhere in between the two. It is proffered in the spirit in
which Graham Hough contends all criticism should be advanced – as a kind
of discourse in which “finally all conclusions are of a kind that could never
finally be proved as true or false,” a discourse which does not attempt to be
more than “suggestive” and “persuasive, in the manner of good conver-
sation.”1
Some time ago, the National Times spotlighted what it called “The Puzzling
Case of Patrick White” – the peculiar mixture of fascination and respect, of
hostility and dislike, which his work evokes among his countrymen; his own
peculiar love–hate relationship with his native Australia; the undoubted
quality of genius in his work, and its marked religious character which ap-
pears to go so much against the grain of the contemporary outlook.2 All this
seems less puzzling, becomes in fact highly meaningful, when considered
within the context of Jung’s theories of the great artist and his role in society.

1 Graham Hough, “The Function of Criticism,” Listener (25 April 1962): 709.
2 See National Times (27 March–1 April 1978): 1.
] Appendix 179

Artistic inspiration
For Jung, it was a deeply significant fact that about the same time as the
Goddess of Reason was enthroned at Notre Dame, Anquetil de Perron
brought back to the West the translation of the Upanishads, which was to be
Europe’s first contact with Eastern religious thought and mysticism. He felt
it illustrated strikingly a central rule:

For every piece of conscious life that loses its value – so runs the law – there
arises a compensation in the unconscious [...] no psychic value can disappear
without being replaced by another of equal intensity.3

Jung felt that the contact with Eastern thought would have far-reaching
effects in waking Western man to a realization of the psychic depth of his
own nature. Through this he could hope to repair the damage wrought in his
own spirit through the stultification of the religious and spiritual instincts
brought about by the uninhibited growth of rationalism and materialism in
the West. In Jung’s view, disruption in the psychic life of the community
follows the same pattern as that within the individual: as soon as one channel
of psychic energy is blocked, like a stream that is dammed, a log-jam or crisis
is inevitable, but as long as the individual psyche functions undisturbed
within a recognized system of belief, no problem is experienced. As soon as
the system is found inadequate, as soon as a person outgrows it, as it were,
neurosis results. In the medieval world, people believed positively in God as
a loving father; today, modern man has lost all the metaphysical certainties of
his medieval brother and has set up in their place the ideals of material
security, general welfare, and humaneness.4 Jung incisively analysed what he
saw as the present impasse of humanity. Apart from the rapid march of
science and technology, the experience of two world wars and the threat of
nuclear holocaust have radically shaken complacency. Modern man has be-
gun to realize that every apparent advance adds to the threat of catastrophe,
so that the worship of reason and materialism has perhaps reached its final
stage of development. The inherent tendency towards the balancing of psy-
chic energy results therefore in a compensating movement. Jung felt he
already observed signs of a forthcoming change in the rapid growth of inter-

3 C.G. Jung, “The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man,” in Jung, Modern Man in Search of a
Soul (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1941): 241–42.
4 Jung, “The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man,” 235.
180 WRITING THE NATION ]

est in psychology, showing that “modern man has to some extent turned his
attention from material things to his own subjective processes.”5 He cites
also a new interest in spiritualism, astrology, even witchcraft, and all kinds of
psychic phenomena. In the context of the present study, one remark of Jung
is of particular significance: “At any rate art has a way of anticipating future
changes in man’s fundamental outlook.”6
Jung provides a far more meaningful interpretation of artistic inspiration
and activity than does Freud. While both Jung and Freud held that the
driving force behind artistic creation was rooted in the unconscious, for
Freud art was no more than a substitute gratification, an expression of
neurosis, while for Jung art was one of man’s most important intuitive and
exploratory activities.7 This difference follows inevitably from the difference
in their conception of the Unconscious. For Freud, the id represented all that
was dark and diseased, all that was suppressed from the conscious life of the
intellect.8 For Jung, it was also the source of primal psychic energy, and
could thus be the source of sustaining curative powers. As a result, they also
differed strongly in their attitudes to the symbol, which is largely the product
of unconscious processes, and also, inevitably, in their approach to art and its
meaning. For Freud, the symbol represented a means of defence for the ego
against the inadmissible content of the unconscious. For Jung, it was the
natural language of the unconscious through which some complex and ur-
gent meaning could be conveyed to consciousness. As Jung has pointed out,
to reduce the work of art to something that should be analysed in terms of
the artist’s repressions is to reduce it to the status of a neurotic symptom.9 It
is its quality of universality that makes art great; the personal idiosyncrasies of
the artist are the least important factor. Thus he proceeded to his conclusion
– if the work of the artist is not compensatory to the artist’s conscious atti-
tude, “the question we must answer is this: in what relation does it stand to
the conscious attitude of his time?” Jung’s own explanation is that

5 “The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man,” 237.

6 Jung, “The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man,” 237.
7 C.G. Jung, “Psychology and Literature,” in Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, 175–

99. See also Jung’s essays in The Spirit on Man, Art and Literature: Collected Works, vol. 15, tr.
R.F.C. Hull (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966).
8 For a useful discussion, see Morris H. Philipson, An Outline of Jungian Aesthetics (Evans-

ton I L : Northwestern U P , 1963).

9 C.G. Jung, “Psychology and Literature,” 191.
] Appendix 181

An epoch is like an individual, when conscious life is characterized by one-

sidedness and by a false attitude, a compensating movement in the unconscious
activates those archetypes necessary for bringing about psychic equilibrium.
This is effected by the collective unconscious in that poets, seers, or leaders
allow themselves, as it were, to be guided by the unexpressed need of their time,
and point the way to fulfilment through word or deed. It is thus the work of
great artists comes to fulfil a definite need of the society in which they live.10

Erich Neumann, who elaborated on this theory of Jung’s to provide illumi-

nating commentary on the relation of art to its epoch, describes what this
entails for the artist. It is a description which appears strikingly to fit the case
of such a writer as Patrick White:

Compensation for the cultural canon means opposition to it — that is opposi-

tion to the epoch’s consciousness and sense of values. The creative artist whose
mission is to compensate for consciousness and the cultural canon is usually an
isolated individual who must destroy the older order to make possible the dawn
of the new.11

The position of the great artist, then, presents a curious paradox. He appears
to be sharply divided from the life of his contemporaries, but is in fact re-
sponding to their deepest need. As Neumann puts it,

When the unconscious forces break through in the artist, when the achetype
striving to be born into the light of the world takes form in him, he is as far
from the men around him as he is close to their destiny. For he expresses and
gives form to the future of his epoch. What occurred in the Renaissance was the
reappearance of the earth-archetype, and the dislodgment of the heaven-
archetype which had in the name of religion, led to the denigration of the beauty
of the natural world, and the life of the senses. Today we are again in the throes
of the disintegration of the existing canon, and this is reflected in the sense of
disorientation in much modern art. However, alongside the disintegration is
evidence of the shaping of a new canon. As though to redress the balance of the
modern tendency to over-emphasize the material and the physical, there are
signs of a new movement towards re-emphasizing the spiritual and religious
factors of experience.

10 C.G. Jung, “Psychology and Literature. 191–92.

11 Erich Neumann, Art and the Creative Unconscious: Four Essays, tr. Ralph Manheim (Kunst
und schöpferisches Unbewusstes, 1954; tr. 1959; New York: Harper & Row, 1966): 94.
182 WRITING THE NATION ]

It could be held, then, that the emphasis on these aspects of experience in

the work of such writers as Patrick White (who, as shall be seen, is no
isolated figure from this point of view in the larger context of world litera-
ture) is evidence of the workings of a new Zeitgeist. According to Jungian
theory, it is the common openness to the promptings of the unconscious in
a particular period which alone can explain the mysterious force which has
been designated the Zeitgeist of an age. It is the common force that seeks to
drive all those who ever compensated for the cultural canon at a given time
or shaped a new one.

Religion and the writer

Although an article by Dorothy Green attempted to prove that Australian
literature has, in fact, a much more religious character than is generally re-
cognized, the work of Patrick White is generally accepted as marking a new
departure in its concentration on the inner spiritual crisis and the individual
religious experience.12 It shows, rather, an affinity with an important trend in
the larger context of writing in the West. Here, as several critics have re-
marked, there has been a noticeable movement towards the rediscovery of
the religious and spiritual dimensions of experience, and recognition of the
validity of a transcendent order in the artist’s continuing attempt to impose
meaning and order on his experience.13 Often, as in the case of White him-
self, though these writers may not themselves subscribe specifically to ortho-
dox Christian doctrines, their works are pervaded by Christian imagery, and
explore basically Christian themes of grace and salvation. While these ele-
ments in the work of such eminent figures as Faulkner, Steinbeck, and

12 Dorothy Green, “Sheep or Goats? Some Religious Ideas in Australian Literature,” St.
Mark’s Review (Canberra) 6 (June 1976): 3–29.
13 Robert Detweiler writes: “the teleological dimension has returned in the form of the

individual religious experience so that the critic must approach the novel embodying that
dimension with a seriousness and objectivity.” He also notes that a large number of inter-
disciplinary studies published as evidence of “the intensity of the current dialogue between
literature and religion.” See his Four Spiritual Crises in Mid-Century American Fiction (Uni-
versity of Florida Monographs in the Humanities; Gainesville: U P of Florida, 1963): 50–
52. Ignazio Silone feels “the discovery of the Christian tradition remains the most impor-
tant gain that has been made in these last years for the conscience of our generation”;
quoted in Amos Wilder, Modern Poetry and the Christian Tradition: A Study in the Relation of a
Religion to Culture (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1952): 219.
] Appendix 183

Robert Penn Warren have been frequently commented on, the trend is also
apparent in the work of several other younger writers. Without wishing to
imply that a new religious awareness affects all American fiction, in an
interesting study of works by William Styron, John Updike, Philip Roth, and
J.D. Salinger, each of which has at its centre “the experience that is the apex
of religious striving: the individual spiritual crisis that leads to the acceptance
or rejection of God,” Robert Detweiler convincingly makes his point that “a
new attitude to religious in fiction […] does in fact exist.”14

In England, writers like Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh and Muriel Spark have
all long established reputations which ensure that the label “Catholic Novelist,”
need not necessarily be a derogatory one. Anthony Burgess is of the opinion
that “in cases where we least expect it, the elements of religion are accorded as
much interest as the machinery of adultery or intrigue.15

In the field of poetry particularly, it is a striking fact that the work of many of
the great figures of the age have a markedly religious character.16 Apart from
the giants like T.S. Eliot and Yeats, and also Hopkins and the later Auden,
the stream of religious poetry continues in the work of Edwin Muir, Eliza-
beth Jennings, David Jones and others.
One need, however, only glance at the work of these poets and novelists
to realize that the trend towards religion by no means represents a simple
return to the doctrines of orthodoxy. Rather, what the contemporary reli-
gious artist seems most concerned to dramatize are the difficulties of a
settled faith. Along with this there is a recognition of the fact that to be
meaningful and relevant in the context of the modern world, the religious
stance must necessitate an involvement with, not a withdrawal from, the
realities of ordinary human existence. These tendencies appear even in the
work of frankly committed writers such as the French Catholic novelists
Mauriac and Bernanos, or the work of Graham Greene. Although these ar-
tists formally admit their adherence to the Roman Catholic faith, in their best
work the bounds of Catholic orthodoxy are often stretched to the utmost.

14 Detweiler, Four Spiritual Crises in Mid-Century American Fiction, 4.

15 Anthony Burgess, “The Manichaeans,” T L S (3 March 1966): 152.
16 In their studies of the religious trend in contemporary literature, both Amos Wilder

and Charles Glicksberg note this fact. See Wilder, Modern Poetry and the Christian Tradition,
46; Glicksberg, Literature and Religion: A Study in Conflict (Dallas T X : Southern Methodist
U P , 1962): 54.
184 WRITING THE NATION ]

Patrick White shows himself very much to be a man of his age, when,
despite his explicitly avowed concern with religion and “the relationship
between the blundering human being and God,” he declares, “I belong to no
church but I have a religious faith.”17 His novels do not set forth any
coherent set of orthodox doctrines. Religion in his work must instead be
defined broadly as a belief in the existence of a trancendental order which
impinges directly on the life and destiny of the individual human being, who
must therefore work out a satisfactory relationship with, and adjustment to,
that order. He does not set out to celebrate settled stages of untroubled
belief. Rather, as he depicts it, the inevitable condition of human existence
seems to be that spiritual vision and understanding is always fleeting and
transient. Laura Trevelyan’s difficult avowal could be placed appropriately in
the mouths of any one of White’s central characters: “I do believe even if it
is not all the time.” Moreover, White’s work constantly emphasizes that the
transcendental world is best approached through the objects of the actual
phenomenal world. The religious spirit, as this is exemplified in the attitudes
of the central characters of the novels, is shown to be intensely responsive to
the phenomenal world, the natural world of bird, beast, and flower, as also to
the world of their fellow human beings. The complex webs of imagery
drawn from the natural world through which White dramatizes his transcen-
dental themes reinforce this sense of its significance to the religious spirit.
In analysing this trend towards religion, observers usually attribute it to
the artist’s conscious recognition of the fact that it is impossible to draw
continued inspiration from the sterile idea of a negative universe. Negative
nihilistic philosophies of existence are not conducive to continued creativity.
This conscious decision does not negate Jung’s idea that in compensating for
the onesidedness of the life of the community, the artist is essentially obeying
the dictates of the unconscious. Rather, it gives added emphasis and direc-
tion to these promptings. In an interview with Craig MacGregor, having ad-
mitted his own belief in God and concern for religion, White avers: “Now as
the world grows more pagan, one has to lead people in the same direction in
a different way,”18 His most unequivocal pronouncement in this regard has
been perhaps his words to Clement Semmler:

17 Craig MacGregor, In the Making (Melbourne: Nelson, 1969): 218.

18 See MacGregor, In the Making, 219.
] Appendix 185

What I am increasingly intent on trying to do in my books is to give professed

unbelievers glimpses of their own unprofessed factor. I think that most people
have a religious factor, but are afraid that by admitting it they will forfeit their
right to be considered intellectuals.19

Yet frequently, also from White’s own accounts, it appears that in the
actual processes of composition, the influence of the unconscious is a factor
of the first importance. In fact, his first published poem was something he
had dreamed of and written down on waking.20 He has described his pro-
cedures to Craig MacGregor: “When you first write down the narrative it
might be unconscious, but when you come to work it over you do it more
consciously.”21 On the same occasion, he stated:

I always like to write three versions of a book. The first is agony and no one
would understand it. With the second you get the shape, it’s more or less all
right. They are largely something that arise out of my unconscious [...]. I rewrite
endlessly, it’s more like oxywelding than writing.

It is not surprising that he should place a particular value on intuition, de-

claring: “Practically anything which I have done of any worth, I feel I have
done through my intuition, not my mind.” Questioned on why he appeared
to disparage the intellect, he says:

I don’t reject reason, but I think intuition is more important creatively in the
beginning […] everything I write has to be dredged up from the unconscious
which is what makes it such an exhausting and perhaps finally such a destructive
process.22

He confessed to Elizabeth Riddell that he couldn’t write a novel on some

“sure fire subject”: “I couldn’t do it. I can only write the way it comes out.
Or rather it half comes out. The rest is dragged out with forceps. I don’t
write with pleasure.”23 One recalls Jung’s description of how, on occasion,
the unconscious holds the artist almost helpless in its grip:

19 Patrick White, “Peace and Other Matters” (1984), in Patrick White Speaks, 170.
20 See Barry Argyle, Patrick White (Edinburgh & London: Oliver & Boyd, 1967): 4.
21 MacGregor, In the Making, 219–20.

22 G.A. Wilkes & Thelma Herring, “A Conversation with Patrick White,” Southerly 33.2

(June 1973): 139.

23 Elizabeth Riddell, “White,” The Australian (7 August 1970): 33.
186 WRITING THE NATION ]

Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes the human being and makes him its
instrument… it is something necessary for him to sacrifice happiness and every-
thing that makes life worth living for the ordinary human being.24

White’s description of the genesis of The Tree of Man to Kylie Tennant could
be offered as an illustration. Having settled in Australia, he had not done any
new work until, “down by the cow-bails one evening, The Tree of Man began
to shape and whether I liked it or not I was beginning another book.”25
When he remarks, “I hate writing, I can’t explain why I do write, except by
saying that I seem to suffer from a kind of disease which can only be eased
by writing,”26 one recalls the artist figure portrayed in The Vivisector, driven to
create on occasion, almost despite himself. Nor does it seem that, over a
writing career that spanned decades, he found the processes of creation be-
coming any easier. As he told David Leitch, “Each novel is a torment that
has to be gone through […] I work so slowly […] You’ve got to dig yourself
in and get on with your work.”27

Against the current

Erich Neumann emphasizes the fact that, although on a superficial level he
might appear to be working against the grain of the contemporary outlook,
the creative man is actually deeply bound up with the life of his time, “more
deeply than the common man who lives in the security of the cultural
shell.”28 To the most superficial observer, it is apparent that White’s educa-
tion and background was such as must have brought him into contact with
the liveliest intellectual and cultural crosscurrents of his time. Educated
abroad, first at an English public school (an experience he heartily detested),
he went on to read modern languages at Cambridge, and travelled widely in
Europe and the U S A . Subsequently, he led the life of a young London intel-
lectual until his experience of the Second World War and its aftermath in
England prompted him to return to his native Australia. Although he had,

24 Jung, “Psychology and Literature,” 195.

25 Kylie Tennant, “Writer in Stained Glass,” Sydney Morning Herald (22 September
1956): 10.
26 Pat Griffith, “Famous Author Hates Writing,” The Advertiser (18 November 1961): 17

27 David Leitch, “Patrick White: A Revealing Profile,” National Times (27 March–1 April

1978): 33.
28 Neumann, Art and the Creative Unconscious, 9.
] Appendix 187

throughout this youthful period, remained hardheadedly independent of

coteries in the intellectual and cultural environment in which he moved, he
had, as David Leitch remarked, “been observing the process of decay […]
and missed nothing.”29 The Living and the Dead records his reaction to the
sterility of English upper-middle-class culture, and The Aunt’s Story glances
briefly but evocatively at the chaos of Europe on the brink of war. For
White, as for so many intellectuals and artists of the time, the experience of
war was deeply traumatic. He told Elizabeth Riddell, “Anybody who has
been in a war and who thinks, will know that it has been the most horrifying
and wasteful period of their lives.”30 It seems that this experience of global
cataclysm impelled a kind of spiritual stock-taking that culminated in White’s
return to Australia, and “the scenes of childhood, which is, after all, the
purest well from which the creative artist draws.”31 Neumann emphasizes
that “Only by suffering perhaps unconsciously under the power of his cul-
ture and his time can he the artist arrive at the freshly opening source which
is destined to quench the thirst of his time.”32
It was not that White found in his native Australia a haven from the “dis-
tressingly parasitic and pointless existence” he had observed elsewhere. In
his analysis of “the Great Australian Emptiness,” he mercilessly castigated
aspects of Australian life which seemed to stand out particularly sharply to
the eyes of the returned exile. His gibes at the “blind blue eyes” of the youths
and girls, the predominance of the muscles, the addiction to cake and steak –
these protested against a way of life that seemed to him simply physical and
shallowly hedonistic.33 The years brought no softening of attitude. He has
referred to Australia as

The country of my fate which in recent years has become increasingly abhorrent
to me, which I believe it has to all men of goodwill engaged in a search for
something more than a material solution.34

Apart from such pronouncements, there is the testimony of the novels,

which has led several Australian critics to castigate White for what they see as

29 Leitch, “Patrick White: A Revealing Profile,” 34.

30 Riddell, “White,” The Australian (7 August 1970): 15.
31 White, “The Prodigal Son,” 38–39.
32 Neumann, Art and the Creative Unconscious, 99.
33 White, “The Prodigal Son,” 38–39.
34 Leitch, “Patrick White: A Revealing Profile,” 32.
188 WRITING THE NATION ]

his contemptuous and unfair portrayal of Australian life. Yet, as Elizabeth

Salter points out, White’s work is “the pearl that results from the irritation of
its surroundings.”35 After the war, White’s surroundings were his native Aus-
tralia. Yet one has only to recollect the dreary frivolity of English middle-
class life in The Living and the Dead, or the glimpse of Europe on the eve of
the war, and the American who “scrabbled on the surface of life” in The
Aunt’s Story, the restless perverted Hero Pavloussiss in The Vivisector, or, in
The Eye of the Storm, the emotionally dessicated “French” princess de Lasca-
banes, to realize that for White, spiritual malaise, and the need to struggle
against superficiality and purely materialistic values, was far from being a
purely Australian dilemma. After all, the decision to return to Australia had
been taken as a result of his feeling that England had become “an intellectual
and spiritual graveyard,” and he has more recently reaffirmed his decision
not to return, because “It has been ruined.” After a visit to America, he de-
clared the people were “quite vegetable […] one never caught sight of any-
one you could imagine reading any book.” New Yorkers seemed “like a herd
of dark distracted animals milling through the streets.”36 The truth seems to
be that White’s own temperament and outlook were such as to set him
strongly at odds with the currents of philistinism and materialism as he
found these manifested everywhere in contemporary life. His spiritual af-
finity was with Blake, Yeats, and Eliot, who saw the malaise of the modern
world as deriving from its gross materialism, its extreme rationalism and
mechanization, leaving no room for mystery, reverence, and worship. The
Australian scene provided White with a microcosm through which he
dramatized a vision universal in its implications.

A deeper empathy
Jung’s theory of the artist and his relation to society, however, also implies
that, despite the apparent opposition of values, there does also exist a deeper
empathy. In the case of such an artist as White, how widely was his desire to
find “more than a material solution” shared by his contemporaries?
A definite answer is hardly possible. I maintained at the outset that this
study does not set out to be more than suggestive and persuasive. In that

35 Elizabeth Salter, “The Australianism of Patrick White,” in The Commonwealth Writer

Overseas: Themes of Exile and Expatriation, ed. Alastair Niven (Liège: Revue des Langues
Vivantes, 1976): 232.
36 Leitch, “Patrick White: A Revealing Profile,” 35.
] Appendix 189

spirit, I shall merely indicate very broadly certain contemporary develop-

ments, signs of which Jung himself felt he discerned years ago, which point
to considerable changes in the spiritual climate of our time.37 Neumann,
looking at modern art, observed, alongside the evidence of disorientation,
signs of new possibilities for harmony:

The art of our time inclines towards a radical spiritualism […] which surges up
from within and compensates for the materialism dominating the outward
picture of our time.38

The interest of the ordinary person in things psychological, mystical, and

spiritual has grown. Interest in psychic phenomena, in astrology, and even
witchcraft are all features of the contemporary scene. Courses in transcen-
dental meditation are advertised, and responded to by housewives, business
executives, and pop stars.
The Jesus movement was certainly symptomatic of a new interest in reli-
gion in some sections of the youth of the community, while the growth of
hippie communes and the fascination with the religions of the East testify at
least to an attempt to seek after “more than a material solution.” Interest-
ingly, in the Australia of the 1970s, whose youth Patrick White had himself
bluntly condemned some years earlier for their propensity to “stare at life
through blind eyes,” provided two striking instances of what could be inter-
preted as evidence of the workings of a new spirit. Drawn from the field that
White referred to as the “Australian Moloch,” sport, Margaret Court and
Shane Gould felt moved to affirm publicly that they had both found some-
thing lacking in their lives even after they had attained the pinnacle of suc-
cess, and that “only religion had filled the void.”39
It could well be maintained today that the religious stance is no longer
regarded as intellectually inadmissible as it once was, when it seemed that the
march of science would reveal all truth. The writings of Karl Popper and
Jacob Bronowski have emphasized the fact that the claims of science are
neither absolute nor infallible. A dialogue is now recognized as possible be-
tween people of science and people of religion. The career of Teilhard de

37 This ‘evidence’ is not cited here as necessarily implying a return to religion as such,
but as broadly indicating a new value for the things of the spirit and the rejection of a
purely materialistic approach to existence.
38 Neumann, Art and the Creative Unconscious, 127.

39 “Religion Fills a Void,” The West Australian (7 June 1976).

190 WRITING THE NATION ]

Chardin, an eminent scientist and devout Jesuit priest, is highly instructive in

this regard.40 The theory of evolution, once regarded as having dealt the
death-blow to religion, forms the cornerstone of his thought. Julian Huxley
paid handsome tribute to him, for having, through his combination of wide
scientific knowledge and deep religious feeling, and a rigorous sense of value,
forced theologians to view their ideas in the new perspective of evolution
and for scientists to see the spiritual implications of their knowledge.41
In fact, a measure of the change in intellectual circles with regard to the
acceptability of the religious experience is exemplified in a comparison be-
tween the attitudes of Julian Huxley and that of his equally celebrated grand-
father, T.H. Huxley. Where Huxley senior could declare quite unequivocally,
“I do not very much care to speak of anything (as) unknowable,” and could
dismiss religion and the efficacy of prayer and miracles as valueless “because
of the inadequacy of the evidence to prove any given case,”42 his grandson
was willing to be more concessive:

Religious experiences are […] ineffable in the literal sense of the word which
makes their discussion difficult. But their significance is both high and deep (as I
am in all humility aware) and they certainly need re-examination and re-appraisal
if their great potential value is to be recognized.43

All this could be regarded as signs of the stirring of a new spirit. John Wren–
Lewis has remarked that, despite the large number of books written to de-
monstrate that religious belief need not be destroyed by science, “the general
public continue resolutely to believe that science has disproved religion,” and
so our age continues to be characterized as a secular age.44 While the debate
must remain inconclusive, I would like to conclude this section of my discus-
sion with a quotation from Ronald Gross (Professor of Social Thought at
New York University) on the Humanist Manifesto II:

40 Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, tr. Bernard Wall (Le Phénomène humain,
1955; tr. 1959; New York: Harper & Row, 1965).
41 Julian Huxley, “Teilhard de Chardin,” in Huxley, Essays of a Humanist (New York:

Harper & Row, 1964): 112.

42 Julian Huxley, “Teilhard de Chardin,” 112.

43 See The Essence of T.H. Huxley, ed. Cyril Libby (New York: Macmillan, 1967): 114.

44 Julian Huxley, “The Humanist Frame,” in Huxley, Essays of a Humanist (New York:

Harper & Row, 1964): 112.

] Appendix 191

“There is more in heaven and earth Horatio than is dreamed of in your philo-
sophy” – Hamlet’s gentle admonition to his friend is echoed, it seems to me by
the widespread reaction to Humanist Manifesto II. Many intellectuals, artists
and social activists […] find this document insufficient in response to today’s
widespread and palpable hunger for transcendence.45

He cites the example of people “too important to the humanist cause be-
cause their sympathies lie with the progressive approach to world problems,”
and quotes one of them (Leda le Shan) on “the crippling of our psyches by
our over-commitment to scientific thought and the atrophy of our equally
important potentialities for transcendent experience.”46
David Leitch’s article on White was accompanied by two sketches by the
Sydney artist Jenny Coopes. One of these seemed to me to convey with
particular eloquence something of White’s grandeur and importance in his
Australian context, and even in the world at large. It depicts tiny human
figures atop a craggy peak in which the stern, accusing features of the artist
are embedded. His massive strength renders the indifference of the little
group insignificant, yet his strength supports them, giving them indeed the
vantage-point from which to view their world. Whether disliked or admired,
the great artist cannot be ignored, because his work, in Jung’s words, “comes
to meet the spiritual needs of the society in which he lives.”47

]^

45 John Wren–Lewis, “Science and Religion,” Twentieth Century 1036 (1968): 54.
46 Wren–Lewis, “Science and Religion,” 54.
47 Leitch, “Patrick White: A Revealing Profile,” 39.
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Sanday, Peggy Reeve. Divine Hunger: Cannibalism as a Cultural System (Melbourne: Cam-
bridge U P , 1986).
Schaffer, Kay. “Australian Mythologies: The Eliza Fraser Story and Constructions of the
Feminine in Patrick White’s A Fringe of Leaves and Sidney Nolan’s Eliza Fraser Paint-
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371–83.
——. In the Wake of First Contact (Melbourne: Cambridge U P , 1995).
——. “ ‘ We are like Eliza’: Twentieth-century Australian responses to the Eliza Fraser
saga” (1998), in Constructions of Colonialism, ed. McNiven, Russell & Schaffer, 79–96.
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August 2006].
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Tacey, David. Patrick White, Fiction and the Unconscious (Melbourne: Oxford U P , 1988).
Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre. The Phenomenon of Man, tr. Bernard Wall, intro. Julian Huxley
(Le phénomène humain, 1955; tr. 1960; New York: Harper & Row, 2nd ed. 1965).
Tennant, Kylie. “Writer in Stained Glass,” Sydney Morning Herald (22 September 1956): 10.
Throssel, Ric. Wild Weeds and Windflowers: The Life and Writing of Katharine Susannah Prichard
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——, & Ralph Crane. Diaspora: The Australasian Experience (New Delhi: Prestige, 2005).
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——, & Adrian Mitchell. New Directions in Australian Studies (New Delhi: Prestige, 2000).
——, & Satendra Nandan, ed. Austral-Asian Encounters: From Literature and Women’s Studies
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Ward, Jill. “Patrick White’s A Fringe of Leaves: History and Fiction,” Australian Literary
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Ward, Russel. The Australian Legend (Melbourne: Melbourne U P , 1958).
Watt, Ian. Conrad in the Nineteenth Century (London: Chatto & Windus, 1980).
Webb, Janeen, & Andrew Enstice. Aliens and Savages: Fiction, Politics and Prejudice in Australia
(Sydney: HarperCollins, 1998).
White, Patrick. Voss (1957; Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin, 1974).
——. Riders in the Chariot (New York: Viking, 1961).
——. A Fringe of Leaves (London: Jonathan Cape, 1976).
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——. “The Bicentenary” (1988), in Patrick White Speaks, 183–86.
——. “In This World of Hypocrisy and Cynicism” (1984), in Patrick White Speaks, 151–58.
——. “Peace and Other Matters” (1984), in Patrick White Speaks, 167–73.
——. “The Prodigal Son” (1958), in Patrick White Speaks, 13–17.
——. “Truth and Fiction” (1980), in Patrick White Speaks, 81–85.
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5/51.4 (1992): 877–88.

]^
 Index

Aboriginal Memorial (Sydney Biennial) 6 Badtjala people (Fraser Island) 79, 83, 85,
Aboriginalism (Hodge and Mishra) 7, 8 86, 89, 110, 157
Aboriginals, likened to Negroes xv; Ballantyne, R.M. 22
personal interest of White in 167–73 Bandler, Faith xxxiv, 170
– see also: indigene Bates, Daisy xxxiii
Achebe, Chinua xviii, xxxvi, 17, 21, 147 Belich, James 167
Africa, European attitudes toward xvii, Bernanos, Georges 183
xviii, 17, 21, 26, 54, 55, 93, 116, 147 Berndt, Ronald and Catherine xxx, 117–
Ahmad, Aijaz xx 18, 51, 60, 94, 117, 120–21, 157, 158, 167
Alexander, Michael 81, 87, 100 Bhabha, Homi xxxv, xxxvi, 145
alterity/otherness xxiv, xxxiii, 15, 17, 23, Bicentenary, Australian 170, 171
25, 50, 56, 97, 101, 107, 119, 125, 162, “Bicentenary, The” (White) 171
173 Black Australians (Paul Hasluck) 4, 5
– see also: fringe-dwellers Black Skin, White Masks (Frantz Fanon)
artist figure 177; in Erich Neumann 181, xxxv, xxxvi, 16, 118, 141, 142, 161, 167
187; in Jung xii, 178, 180, 181, 185, 188; Black Words, White Page (Adam
in Riders in the Chariot xxvii, 5, 6, 24, 63, Shoemaker) 6
77, 83, 85, 123, 131, 132, 144, 152, 154, Blackman, Barbara 82
171, 184; in The Vivisector 186; function Blake, William 188
of White as xii, 184, 187, 188, 191 Bracefell, David (convict) 81, 82, 87, 112
Ashcroft, Bill xii, xx, xxi, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, Brady, Veronica 92, 178
23, 24 Brantlinger, Patrick xvii, xxx, xxxiii, 22,
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths & Helen 25, 26, 30, 93
Tiffin xx, 14 Brighter Sun, A (Samuel Selvon) 22
– see also: The Empire Writes Back Bronowski, Jacob 189
Auden, W.H. 183 Brown, Elaine 87
Aunt’s Story, The (White) 187, 188 Brown, Ruth 33
Aurousseau, Marcel 33 Bulletin, The xxix, xxxii, 67
Australian Legend (Russel Ward) xxviii Burgess, Anthony 183
202
Burke and Wills (explorers) 49
Burrows, J.F. 43
Caliban, as trope 14
Canada, attitude toward indigene in xiv,
xx, 9, 10, 11, 24
cannibalism xvii, xxx, xxxv, 15, 23, 50,
82, 106, 115, 157, 162; in A Fringe of
Leaves 93–97
Carey, Peter 12, 16
Carter, Paul xiii, xxviii
Chisholm, Alec 31, 32, 44, 73, 98
Christianity 26, 50, 65, 76, 97, 107, 120,
128, 129, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 144,
145, 146, 165, 182, 183
Clark, Manning 169
Clarke, Marcus xxxiii
Collier, Gordon xi, 19, 82, 177
colonialism/colonial xii, xx, xxii, xxvii,
xxx, xxxiii, xxxvi, 22, 59, 85, 92, 117,
132, 175; mind-set in xviii, xxxiii, xxxv,
17, 18, 21, 24, 25, 33, 40, 54, 57–59, 61,
73, 80, 87, 107–109, 131, 146, 147, 159,
161, 166
Conrad, Joseph xviii, xix, xxxiii, 17, 19–
20, 25–26, 30, 33, 35, 50, 54, 55, 65, 76,
87, 97, 104, 109, 115, 117, 131, 146, 147
convict xx, xxix, xxxiii, 16, 25, 43, 51, 61,
64, 66–69, 70, 72–75, 81, 82, 86, 87, 92,
97, 101, 103, 105, 110, 111, 112, 113, 115,
159, 162, 164
Cook, James xxx, xxxi
Coonardoo (Katharine Susannah Prichard)
xxxiv, 153
Coopes, Jenny 191
Coote, Gillian 83
Coral Island (R.M. Ballantyne) 22
Cotter, Michael 45
counter-discourse, in settler colonies xxvi
Country Without Music, A (Nicholas
Hasluck) 17
Craven, Peter 155, 156
Crowley, F.K. 4
Crucible of Prophets, A (Veronica Brady)
178
WRITING THE NATION ]
Culture and Imperialism (Edward Said) xiii,
xxiii, xxv, xxx, 17, 18
Curnow, Allen 10
Curtis, John 80, 112
Dampier, William xxx, xxxi, 165
Dark Side of the Dream, The (Hodge and
Mishra) xxi, 6, 7, 12, 120, 154
Davidson, Jim 80, 116
decolonization xv, 11; lingering oppres-
sion of indigene during xxiv
Dening, Greg xiii
Detweiler, Robert 182, 183
Dickens, Charles 16
During, Simon 98, 155, 156, 157, 158
Eliot, T.S. 183, 188
Eliza Fraser Sings (Peter Sculthorpe) 82
Elliott, Brian 11
Ellison, Ralph 150
Empire Writes Back, The (Ashcroft et al.)
xxi, 10, 11, 23
eurocentrism xxxi, xxxiv, 13, 32
Europeans, fear of regression 54
Evans, Raymond, and Jan T. Walker 86,
89, 112
explorer, figure of 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34,
39, 43, 44, 47, 48, 49, 53, 54, 56, 71, 76,
94, 153, 155; White’s departure from
historical representations 33
Eye of the Storm, The (White) 188
Eyre, Edward John 29, 31, 32, 33, 42, 43,
44, 45, 49, 52, 53, 58, 59, 98
Fanon, Frantz xxiv, xxv, xxxiv, xxxv,
xxxvi, 15, 16, 118, 141–43, 161–62, 167,
168, 173
Fatal Shore, The (Robert Hughes) xiii, 68,
74, 75, 97, 100, 111
Faulkner, William 182
Fear and Temptation (Terry Goldie) xiv, xvi,
9, 10, 11, 12, 54, 61, 76, 114, 159, 174
Field, Barron xxviii, 10
Flaubert, Gustave xix
Flaws in the Glass (Patrick White) 167, 168
] Index
Foley, Fiona (Aboriginal artist and activist)
6, 79, 85, 86
For the Term of His Natural Life (Marcus
Clarke) xxxiii
Fraser Island 79, 83, 84, 85, 86, 89, 110,
112, 157, 168
Fraser, Eliza 19, 79–89, 93, 94, 100, 109–
12, 116, 154; historical treatments of 79-
81; emphasis on, to disadvantage of
Aborigines 85; White’s handling of
source material in A Fringe of Leaves 82–
87
Freeman, Cathy (Aboriginal athlete) 3
Freud, Sigmund 180
Fringe of Leaves, A (Patrick White) xiv, 10,
15, 18, 19, 21, 23, 25, 26, 33, 64, 67, 79–
116, 117, 126, 149, 151, 153, 154, 157, 160,
161, 162, 163, 165, 166, 168
fringe-dwellers 123, 126, 127, 166
– see also: alterity
Furphy, Joseph xxviii
gender, in A Fringe of Leaves 88
Generations of Men, The (Judith Wright) 151
genocide xxiii, xxx, 143
Gibbings, Robert 112
Glicksberg, Charles 183
Goldie, Terry xiv, xv, xvi, 9, 10, 11, 12, 54,
61, 76, 96, 114, 158–61, 166, 174
Graham, John (convict) 81, 111, 112
Great Expectations (Charles Dickens) 16
Green, Dorothy 154, 182
Greene, Graham 183
Griffiths, Gareth 6, 7, 12, 154
Gross, Ronald 190
Guérard, Albert xviii
Harpur, Charles xxxi, xxxii
Harris, Wilson xxxvi, 96
Hasluck, Nicholas 17
Hasluck, Paul 5
Healy, J.J. xxix, xxxiii, xxxiv, xxxv, 6, 7,
77, 120, 127, 132–33, 144, 149–53
Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad xviii,
xix, 17, 18, 20, 21, 23, 25, 26, 30, 37, 40,
203
43, 50, 54, 55, 59, 64, 76, 87, 88, 92, 97,
108, 115, 117, 131, 132, 146, 147
Hergenhan, Laurie 173
Herring, Thelma 185
Hodge, Bob, and Vijay Mishra xxi, 6, 7, 8,
12, 119, 120, 153, 154
Holocaust 141, 142, 162
Hopkins, Gerard Manley 183
Hough, Graham 178
Hubber, Brian, and Vivian Smith 173
Hughes, Robert xiii, 67, 68, 74, 75, 97, 111
Hulme, Keri 17
Hurley, Ron (Aboriginal artist) 6
Huxley, Julian 158, 190
Huxley, Thomas Henry xxx, 190
Idriess, Ion xxxiv
imperialism xviii, 29, 45; as profit-making
57
indigene/aborigine/indigenous xiv, xviii,
xxvi, xxix, xxxiii, 2, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14,
15, 27, 31, 53, 59, 61, 68, 71, 75, 91, 97,
101, 102, 106, 107, 109, 110, 111, 113, 115,
132, 133, 149, 154, 158, 159, 161, 162,
163, 164, 165, 166, 168, 175
indigene, autonomous and cohesive
culture of, in White’s fiction 32, 158,
166; in A Fringe of Leaves 88–90; and Alf
Dubbo in Riders in the Chariot 126–29
indigene, centrality of to white Australian
identity xxxiv, 11; definition of xv, xvi;
elision of presence xxix; imputed super-
iority of xv; power and agency of 29,
33, 34–40, 43, 47, 48, 108, 113; qualified
europeanization of in Riders in the Chariot
132–38; reification of xiv; representa-
tions of 18
indigene, white 10, 23, 25, 50, 54, 56, 57,
58, 67, 76; Australian convict as, esp.
Judd in Voss 67–73, Jack Chance in A
Fringe of Leaves 110–15, and Rose Portion
in Voss 74–75; transformation of Voss
into 30, 56–61
indigeneity 2, 12, 23, 61, 83, 106, 113, 132,
163
204 WRITING THE NATION ]

indigenization (Terry Goldie) 9, 10, 11, 17, Macherey, Pierre 9

54, 55, 61, 67, 73, 87 MacIntyre, Stuart 5
Maes–Jelinek, Hena 96
Jack Maggs (Peter Carey) 16 Malouf, David 17
James, William 165, 177 manichaeanism xviii, 61, 116
Jameson, Fredric xx – see also: Abdul JanMohamed
JanMohamed, Abdul xviii, 101, 116 Mann, Cecil xxxiv
Jennings, Elizabeth 183 Manne, Robert xxiv, 4
Jew 129, 131, 136, 139, 141, 142, 143, 144, Maori 11, 15
145, 146, 161, 162, 164, 165 Marr, David 79, 83, 84, 157, 168, 171
Jindyworobak movement 11, 27 Marret, Allen 83
Johnston, Anna xxii, xxvi Mauriac, François 183
Jones, David 183 McNiven, Ian 157
Jung, Carl Gustav xii, 158, 174, 175, 177, Memmi, Albert 45
178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 184, 185, 186, Meston, Archibald 86
188, 189, 191 Miller, Olga 86, 89
Moore, David 84
Kendall, Henry xxxii Morgan, Sally 8
Kramer, Leonie 154 Mrs. Fraser on the Fatal Shore (Michael
Kroetsch, Robert 10, 17 Alexander) 81, 87
Mudrooroo 6, 118, 119, 120, 121, 123,
La Nauze, J.A. 4 124, 154, 167, 168, 173
Lamming, George xxxvi, 14 Muir, Edwin 183
land-claim disputes 1–2 Mukherjee, Arun xxi
Lawson, Alan xix, xxi, xxii, xxiv, xxvi, Mulvaney, John 43
xxvii, 1, 2, 14, 15, 24, 25, 154 Murdoch, Walter 4
le Shan, Leda 191 My Place (Sally Morgan) 8
Lee, Dennis 10 mysticism 12, 37, 63, 66, 75, 76, 97, 106,
Legend of the Nineties, The (Vance Palmer) 116, 135, 137, 138, 140, 145, 146, 149,
xxviii 158, 159, 160, 165, 166, 167, 179, 189
Leichhardt, Ludwig 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 42, – see also: religion, spirituality
43, 44, 49, 53, 71, 73
Leitch, David 186, 187, 191 nation, narration of xii, xxvi, xxxiv, 2, 4,
Leonard, John Stewart 156 6, 9, 12, 13, 15, 27, 31, 87, 132, 136, 144,
“Letter to Humanity” (White) 169 154, 158, 174, 175
Lindsay, Elaine 178 neocolonialism 7
Ling, Ann 52, 80, 83, 98 Neumann, Erich 181, 186, 187, 189
Literature and the Aborigine in Australia (J.J. New Zealand, attitude toward indigene in
Healy) xxix, xxxiii, 6, 120, 133, 144, 149, xiv, xx, xxxiii, 9, 10, 11, 15, 17
150, 151, 152, 153 Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o xxxvi
Living and the Dead, The (White) 187, 188 noble savage xvii, xxxi
Livingstone (explorer) 29, 30 Nolan, Sidney 81, 82, 84, 85, 161

Mabo land-claim dispute 1, 2 Obeysekera, Gananath 95, 97

MacGregor, Craig 184, 185 Olympic Games, Sydney 3
] Index
Ondaatje, Michael 161
orality 61, 103, 114, 133, 159, 162, 163,
164, 165
orientalism and Orientalism (Edward Said)
xi, xiii, xiv, xv, xviii, xix, xxiv, xxv, xxvi,
xxxiii, xxxvi, 7, 18, 19, 22, 23, 32, 37, 40,
110, 116, 117, 151, 155, 166, 167
Palmer, Vance xxviii
paternalism 3, 7
Patrick White and the Unconscious (David
Tacey) 177
“Peace and Other Matters” (White) 185
Perera, Suvendrini 17
Philipson, Morris H. 180
Popper, Karl 189
Post-Aboriginalism 8
postcolonialism xii, xiii, xx, xxi, xxiv, xxvi,
2, 7, 12, 13, 14, 16, 19, 24, 153, 158, 174
Prichard, Katharine Susannah xxxiii,
xxxiv, 153
“Prodigal Son, The” (Patrick White) 29,
58, 171, 174, 175, 187
“Psychology and Literature” (Jung) 180,
186
Queensland xxiii, xxix, 11, 34, 87, 123,
150
Rakooka, Solomon (childhood friend of
White’s) 167, 172
Ravi, Srilata 17
Reese, Trevor 3
Reeves, Wilf (Aboriginal informant for A
Fringe of Leaves) 83, 84, 85, 94, 157, 168
religion xxv, xxix, xxxii, 40, 52, 53, 65,
98, 128, 158, 164, 165, 174, 175, 178, 179,
181–85, 189, 190; in White xi, xii
– see also: mysticism, spirituality
Remembering Babylon (David Malouf) 17
Rewriting God (Elaine Lindsay) 178
Reynolds, Henry xvii, xxiii, 1, 3, 4, 30, 32,
34, 43, 49, 51, 52, 123, 126, 161, 167
Riddell, Elizabeth 185, 187
205
Riders in the Chariot (Patrick White) xiv, 18,
21, 23, 25, 26, 77, 117–47, 149, 152, 153,
158, 160, 162, 164, 165, 166
Road to Botany Bay, The (Paul Carter) xiii,
xxviii
Robinson, Roland 27
Rocks and Sticks of Words, The (Gordon
Collier) xi, 19, 177
Roth, Philip 183
Rousseau, Jean–Jacques xxxi
Rowley, Charles 4, 34
Royal Commission into Black Deaths in
Custody 2
Rudd, Kevin (Australian PM) 3
Russell, Henry Stuart 87
Russell, Lynette 88, 93, 110
Ryan, Lyndall xxiv
Said, Edward xi, xiii, xiv, xv, xviii, xix,
xxiv, xxv, xxvi, xxx, xxxvi, 8, 17, 18, 19,
29, 32, 33, 37, 40, 110, 167, 172, 80, 174,
175
Salinger, J.D. 183
Salter, Elizabeth 188
Sartre, Jean–Paul 141
Schaffer, Kay 6, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85,
86, 87, 88, 91, 94, 95, 108, 112, 154
Sculthorpe, Peter 82
secularism xi, xii, 190
Selvon, Samuel 22
Semmler, Clement 184
Senghor, Léopold Sédar xxxvi
settler colonies xiii, xix, xx, xxi, xxii, xxiii,
xxiv, xxv, xxvi, xxvii, xxix, xxx, 2, 9–15,
17, 23, 24, 30, 54, 76, 83, 132, 158, 174,
177; concept under-applied to Australian
literature xxii; definition of xx, xxi; de-
structive dynamic in xxiii; neglected by
Edward Said xiii; under-discussed in
postcolonial practice xii, xxi
sexuality, treatment of in White 89, 158,
159, 160, 161
Shakespeare, William (The Tempest) 13–14
206 WRITING THE NATION ]

Shipwreck of the Stirling Castle (John Curtis)
80, 84
Shoemaker, Adam xxxiv, 6
Silone, Ignazio 182
Slemon, Stephen xix, xx, xxi, xxii, xxvii,
16, 24
Spark, Muriel 183
“Spiritual Problem of Modern Man, The”
(Jung) 179, 180
spirituality 26, 33, 52, 53, 60, 65, 66, 75,
76, 82, 83, 87, 96, 102, 106, 115, 116,
128, 132, 138, 144, 157, 158, 163, 165,
169, 177, 179, 181, 182, 183, 184, 187,
188, 189, 190, 191; in Australia xii; in
White xii, xxvi; of indigene xv
– see also: mysticism, religion
Stanley (explorer) 30
Steinbeck, John 182
Stephens, Brunton xxxii
stolen generation 3, 130
Strange New World (Alec Chisholm) 31, 44
Styron, William 183
Sydney Biennial 6
Tacey, David 177
Teilhard de Chardin 190
Tempest, The (Shakespeare) 13–14
Temptations of Big Bear, The (Rudy Wiebe) 9
Tench, Lieutenant xv, xxxi, 48
Tennant, Kylie 186
terra nullius 1, 31, 33
Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe) 147
Thomas, Sue xxxiv, 8
totemism (Aboriginal) 60
Tree of Man, The (Patrick White) xi, 186
Trilling, Lionel 25, 26
True Story of the Kelly Gang, The (Peter
Carey) 16
Updike, John 183
violence xxxii, xxxiii, 8, 37, 44, 92, 159,
161, 162, 166; in Australian colonization
xxiii; treatment of in White 161
Vivisector, The (White) 186, 188
Voss (Patrick White) xiv, 10, 18, 19, 21,
23, 25, 26, 29–77, 79, 80, 87, 98, 99,
101, 102, 104, 112, 116, 117, 126, 132,
133, 149, 152, 153, 156, 159, 161, 162,
163, 165, 166
Walk Across Sydney Harbour Bridge
demonstration 3
Ward, Jill 80
Ward, Russel xxviii
Warren, Robert Penn 183
Watt, Ian 54, 55
Waugh, Evelyn 183
Webb, Janeen, and Andrew Enstice xv,
xxxi, xxxii, 155
White, Patrick
– The Aunt’s Story 187, 188
– “The Bicentenary” 171
– The Eye of the Storm 188
– Flaws in the Glass 167, 168
– A Fringe of Leaves xiv, 10, 15, 18, 19, 21,
23, 25, 26, 33, 64, 67, 79–116, 117, 126,
149, 151, 153, 154, 157, 160, 161, 162,
163, 165, 166, 168
– “Letter to Humanity” 169
– The Living and the Dead 187, 188
– “Peace and Other Matters” 185
– “The Prodigal Son” 29, 58, 171, 174,
175, 187
– Riders in the Chariot xiv, 18, 21, 23, 25,
26, 77, 117–47, 149, 152, 153, 158, 160,
162, 164, 165, 166
– The Tree of Man xi, 186
– The Vivisector 186, 188
– Voss xiv, 10, 18, 19, 21, 23, 25, 26,
29–77, 79, 80, 87, 98, 99, 101, 102, 104,
112, 116, 117, 126, 132, 133, 149, 152, 153,
156, 159, 161, 162, 163, 165, 166
White, Richard 68, 165
Whitlock, Gillian xxi
Wiebe, Rudy 9, 10, 17, 76, 158, 159, 174;
comparison with White 12
Wild Cat Falling (Mudrooroo) 118, 121,
122, 124, 167
Wildcat Screaming (Mudrooroo) 118, 119
] Index
Wilder, Amos 183
Wilkes, G.A. 185
Williams, Mark xx, 15
Windschuttle, Keith xxiv, 5
Winton, Tim 17
Wolfe, Patrick 7, 8, 120
207
World, the Text, and the Critic, The (Edward
Said) xix
Wren–Lewis, John 190
Wright, Judith 10, 151, 152, 155
Yeats, W.B. 183, 188