Three Short Stories by Steele Rudd-Queensland, Australia - Bush Writer

 

Three Short Stories by Steele Rudd-Queensland, Australia - Bush Writer

Aussie Author Challenge 2020

Steele Rudd (1868 to 1935) was the pen name for a very famous writer of Australian Bush Tales, Arthur Davis. Davis was born in the outback region of Queensland Australia to a Welsh father and an Irish mother.   He left school at age 11 and worked at various jobs on outback stations and farms.   At age 18 he got a job in the local  sheriff's office and about this time he sent in a short story to The Bulletin about some of his father's experiences working and making a life for a family of eight in the harsh bush country, the outback.   The editor

of The Bulletin encouraged him to write more stories and Steele Rudd became a very popular author of simple, good natured stories about life in the outback in late 19th century Australia.   The stories poke gentle fun at the country ways people in the region but they do not show them as buffoons or fools.   The people in the three stories I enjoyed reading were super resourceful, very strong in their bodies and minds and subject to the loneliness  that other Bush Authors like Henry Lawson and Barbara Baynton have shown us in their stories.   There is some slang and use of dialect in the stories but I could follow the conversations and I enjoyed learning some new slang.

"Starting the Selection" 7 pages, 1898

"Starting the Selection" is about the first few months that  the father, referred to as "Dad" spent on the farm by himself preparing the land to be farmed for the first time.  I could not but admire the tremendous hard work that this would have taken.     Everybody suffered tremendously from the isolation.

"Our First Harvest" (eight page, 1898) gave us a poignant look at the financial difficulties faced by early farmers.   Dad and his five sons worked very hard to bring in the first harvest and get it into the local store for sell.   They were elated when the store owner told them the harvest would yield 12  pounds.  I could feel the shared heart ache of Mom and Dad when the store owner told them he was going to deduct nine pounds to pay their account with him.   Rudd does not say but we get the feeling there might be some shady bookkeeping involved.   Mom and Dad just give each other strength and go on. 

"The Night We Watched for Wallabies"

In  my limited research on Rudd I did not find any stories consistently listed as his best work so I was on my own as to where to start in his work.    After completing these two stories I found one entitled, "The Night We Watched for Wallabies" and I thought OK sounds like fun and it was.   Dad tells his sons they all have to spend the night outside the house to stand guard for roving bands of Wallabies (small kangaroos) which can have devastating effects on crops like wheat and corn.   Rudd's style is straight forward while showing a keen eye for details.

There is a surprise ending that does sort of poke fun at the people in the story a bit (though not in a mean way) so I will not reveal more of  the plot.  

These stories are easy to read, straight  forward  works that the people they are written about could enjoy.   They let me see what family life was like in the Queensland Out Back in the 1890s.    You had to be tough, self reliant, and a good sense of humor was a big help also I think.   

Older Australians may recall the very long running radio program (1932 to 1952) Dave and Dad which was inspired by the stories of Rudd.   In the program the dignified intelligent people in his stories were reduced to slack jawed outback yokels.   Rudd was always very offended by this and himself had the greatest respect for the people of the outback, especially   the women.   

I liked these stories.    Maybe the are not  great art and I admit they were in part historical curiosity reads for me but I am glad I was motivated to take the time to learn about Steele Rudd.   All of these stories can be read online at Free Reading in Australia (a great resource).   My basic source of information on Rudd is the Australian National Biographical Dictionary.    

The Cartography of Others by Catherine McNamara- 2018 - A Collection of Short Stories

My Post on Pelt and Other Stories - The Debut Collection of Catherine McNamara

A Short Story by Catherine McNamara

My Q and A with Catherine  McNamara 

Website of Aussie Reads 2020

Catherine McNamara grew up in Sydney, ran away to Paris to write, and ended up in West Africa running a bar. She was an embassy secretary in pre-war Mogadishu, and has worked as an au pair, graphic designer, gallery manager, teacher, translator and shoe model. 

Praised by Hilary Mantel, her short story collection The Cartography of Others (May 2018, Unbound) was a Finalist in the People’s Book Prize 2019-20, was awarded Grand Prize in the Eyelands International Book Awards (Greece) and listed on the Literary Sofa’s Best of 2018 Reads. Her book Pelt and Other Stories (2013) was long-listed for the Frank O’Connor Award and semi-finalist in the Hudson Prize. Her short stories and flash fiction have been Pushcart-nominated and published widely in the U.K., Europe, U.S.A. and Australia. Her flash fiction collection Love Stories for Hectic People is out in autumn 2020. 

Catherine speaks Italian and French and lives in Veneto, Italy, where she hosts summer retreats for writers and artists in her African-art-filled farmhouse. She is an online writing mentor and coach

Earlier this month I posted about Catherine McNamara’s wonderful debut collection Pelt and other Stories.  Here is my overview of that collection:

“Pelt and Other Stories by Catherine McNamara, her debut collection, is a very powerful, thoroughly captivating collection of stories most of which center on the post colonial world of central coastal West Africa. The  subtlies and levels of irony in these stories show a very great insight into how cross cultural encounters impact all parties.  The people in the stories range from European hotel owners in Ghana, famous art photographers, mistresses of Europeans, drivers, and village people.   The stories are mostly but not all set in West Africa.  One is set in the very worldly city of Sydney, some in Italy.   .   The stories are miniature marvels in showing us the manifestation of orientalizing of the African not just by Europeans and Americans but by returned citizens.  The stories show us how hard it is to return home unchanged.   These stories are not about ignorant hateful prejudice.   McNamara is too knowing and intelligent for that.  They are about the very great difficulties of escaping from our deep conditioning, our unseen frames of reference.   The stories are also fun to read.  Lots of interesting things happen, there is some sex, women eyeballing each other, and a strong sense of humor.”  (There are brief descriptions of a number of her stories in my linked above post.) 

I highly recommend our Q and A session.  I just reread it and am very proud to have it on The Reading Life.

 I am delighted to have a copy of her second collection, The Cartography of Others.  There are twenty stories in the collection.  Posting upon, I dont see myself as a reviewer and dont like to be called one, collections of Short stories is very challenging.  One feels driven to find commonality among the works.

I intend to start my exploration of this collection by talking about three of her stories.  Every Short Story I Post upon I read at least two times.  If I dont find myself wanting to do that I dont post on it.

“Three Days in Hong Kong”

I decided to read this story as, with my wife, I have spent three days in Hong Kong, for us a fabulous place for shopping, sightseeing and scrumptious dining.  The woman at the center of this told in the second person story went to Hong Kong for a very different reason, to spend three nights with a wealthy married man, who lives there, with whom she is having an affair.  He paid her fare from London, where their affair began and has booked her into a luxury Hong Kong hotel.

As the story opens the woman is leaving  Hong Kong International to go to her hotel.  McNamara does a very good job capturing the feel of the ride in from the AirPort, kind of a surreal experience for first time visitors:

“You fly in. He says he won’t be there, there’ll be a sign with your code name.Philomena M. He likes secrets. You know he likes living between several worlds suspended in the air. He likes flight. He risks collisions. He travels way too much. There is the card with your secret name. Philomena M. The driver has pointed sideburns like Nick Cave and caramel skin pulled tight over his cheekbones. You drive onto the motorway into the night, past cheap housing blocks with scabbed facades, balconies crammed as though the life is oozing out of them. The city pulls you in, sucks you under, chucks you up, then streams around you. Chasms, rafts of lights, a Prada shop; the black numb sky and nowhere water.”

He calls the first day and says business will keep him away tonight. Disappointed, we sense the weakness of her passion for the man.  We wonder how much is her need, she is 37, childless and never married, to feel still sexually desirable mingled with a slighly buried arrousal by the idea of having sex at the ultra-chic hotel. On the second night he tells her he must be with his wife as it is their anniversary.  She begins to feel a need for sex.  On the third night he calls with another excuse.  I will leave the powerful ending untold.  In just a few pages McNamara brings a woman very much to life, does a fine job on the setting.  We see the woman does not really know her own feelings.  We know only a little about her early years, just enough to make the story even more intriguing.  She is a reader, she brought books with her and this made her more interesting.  As I read these charged lines I wondered did the man really want to see her or not:

“I cannot speak any more, my darling. Remove that dress.’ You stand naked over Hong Kong, your hands in tepees on the glass, your legs apart. Your hair falls down your back, over your breasts. It is hard to believe anyone is watching you. For him, you touch yourself. You are not very wet. The man you left used to arouse you in a moderate way that you felt was not enough. You would lie awake, your lips to his shoulder. You were so mad he never probed your body hard enough, that you made sure his efforts were in vain. You want to hug his disabled daughter. You decide that when you go back you will call him and do this. The next morning you rush to the door naked when you hear a knock. As you unlock the door you feel sweat between your hairless buttocks. Everything has been carefully waxed. Your sex is a peeled fruit. Your fingertips like to wander over the moist skin. It is a woman in a mauve uniform holding flowers. You snatch them from her. You throw them down and go to the bathroom where you look at your parts which are much more beautiful than the flowers. Then this disgusts you, the way the folds are so prominent. You love to pull a man’s cock into you.”

In just a few pages McNamara takes us deeply into two people and uses the vibrant pulsating city of Hong Kong wonderfully as background.

Return from Salt Pond 

“Return from Salt Pond”, set in Ghana, opens very dramatically.  A couple, they met in London, both are from Ghana and are contemplating a move home.  On a dark road late at night someone threw a rock through the windshield of their car, striking the woman in the face, glass shreds cutting her. The man decides to take her to a friend’s  house.  Before they were attacked they were looking at a property the man wants to turn into a place for guests with a nightclub.  He needs the woman to front most of the costs.  The woman doubts their relationship will endure very long so she is resistant.  In this story McNamara shows the connection of sex and dominant behaviour, the man is a cruel predator.   Like “Three Days in Hong Kong” the male lead character cares little for the woman.  I got the feel for the scary after dark streets of Accra from this story.  McNamara is very good at setting her stories in place.  But just as I was ready to dismiss the man, we learn this and once again we are taken deep into a character and maybe a bit into our own rush to judgements:

“There had been an uninterrupted stretch of six months when his father had been dying, when every night he had come to the club from the hospital with stricken hands. Every night he had changed the old man’s soiled garments and sheets. Kenneth had a strong suspicion he would end up like him, a marooned vessel other people would have to look after and clean. He hoped he still had time to think about these things. But tonight, as he thought about the burst of shattered glass, he realised that what he wanted more than anything was a companion to see him through. He wanted a wife. And what Erica saw as a sign that they would never stay together and produce a child now made him think of orgasm, and the grappling and piercing and deliverance of sex. He wanted to explain this to her. He imagined her limber body over him and felt weak in his groin. He knew they would never make love again.”

“They Came from the East”

“They Came from the East” is a fascinating story, set in France and related to the immigrant influx changing European politics in a rightward direction.  There are five central characters, the young male living at home narrator, his parents, Peter a refugee from wars “in the east”, and Peter’s late brother Milo.  

The father took Peter in, feeling sorry for him.  His wife really did not want him in the house so the father fixed up a shed for him.  The family are professional musicians.  McNamara slowly and subtly reveals, not completely, a terrible secret I strained to understand.

“You think of young men your own age, promised safety but pushed off buses and led in single file through the woods. You think that Milo, had he been raised in Peter’s country, would have worn a uniform and slaughtered men. You are not sure how this skill is devised but you know that your brother would have given captives water, pronounced their names; absorbed duty. Shot them. You disconnect that thought, but it stays awash in you. Your father travels to Devon to see to works on your grandfather’s house. Your mother is at college teaching. Peter has long departed across the suburbs on a dawn train. You have a recital tonight outdoors; your throat is dry. You swallow honey and make herbal tea. You do not possess Milo’s exuberant organism. When Milo finally hanged himself in the park, the doctors wished to dissect his brain.”

This is a disturbing story, there is much more involved than I have mentioned.

I highly recommend this collection to all lovers of short stories.

As I proceed on I may begin to talk of the themes of the stories.

I defer to the elegant judgement of Hilary Mantel, twice winner of The Booker Prize to close this post.

““McNamara’s work has a fierce, vital beat, her stories robust yet finelyworked, her voice striking in its confidence and originality. She writes with sensuous precision and a craft that is equally precise. This is fiction that can stand up in any company.” –Hilary Mantel

Mel u

Pelt and Other Stories by Catherine McNamara (2013)

World wide health issues have halted most global travel plans.  In the marvelous stories of Catherine McNamara we can continue our journeys, in great company.  

Website of Aussie Reads 2020

Gateway to Catherine McNamara on The Reading Life.  Including a very wide ranging Q and A Session 

Catherine McNamara grew up in Sydney and studied visual communication and African and Asian Modern History before moving to Paris.

She worked in an embassy in pre-war Mogadishu and later lived in Accra, Ghana, where she co-managed a bar and art gallery. She moved to Italy ten years ago, where her jobs have included translating welding manuals and modelling shoes.

Catherine is the author of the erotic comedy The Divorced Lady’s Companion to Living in Italy (Indigo Dreams Publishing) and wrote the children’s book Nii Kwei’s Day (Frances Lincoln Publishing).

Pelt and Other Stories was a semi-finalist in the Hudson Prize 2011.

Posting on a collection of short stories is to me more challenging than posting on a novel.   Pelt and Other Stories by Catherine McNamara, her debut collection, is a very powerful, thoroughly captivating collection of stories most of which center on the post colonial world of central coastal West Africa. The  subtlies and levels of irony in these stories show a very great insight into how cross cultural encounters impact all parties.  The people in the stories range from European hotel owners in Ghana, famous art photographers, mistresses of Europeans, drivers, and village people.   The stories are mostly but not all set in West Africa.  One is set in the very worldly city of Sydney, some in Italy.   The stories are about 

relationships, McNamara knows white men can do things in West Africa that they cannot or will not

do back home.   The stories are miniature marvels in showing us the manifestation of orientalizing of the African not just by Europeans and Americans but by returned citizens.  The stories show us how hard it is to return home unchanged.   These stories are not about ignorant hateful prejudice.   McNamara is too knowing and intelligent for that.  They are about the very great difficulties of escaping from our deep conditioning, our unseen frames of reference.   The stories are also fun to read.  Lots of interesting things happen, there is some sex, women eyeballing each other, and a strong sense of humor and fun.  

I totally endorse this collection of short stories to all lovers of the form.  There are eighteen very diverse stories in the collection. I will talk briefly about several of them to help give potential readers a feel for the collection and help me increase my understanding of the stories.  I also include a few quotes so you can sample her marvelous prose.

"Pelt"

"Other girls say the same thing about their obroni men: when their old wives turn up they become little boys."

Set in Ghana, the title and lead story of Pelt and Other Stories, is told in the first person by a woman who progressed from working for a white man, an obroni, to being his mistress pregnant with his baby.   She lives in his house.  Up until now his wife has not been there for a long time.  The power in this story is in seeing how the local woman relates to the wife.  She knows the woman at least suspects her relationship with the man.   She is self conscious about her pregnancy.  When she notices the wife looking at her bloated breasts, she wants to tell her how her husband liked sucking on them.   She also knows the other women who work in the house will see she has fallen down in status now that the wife is on the scene.  There is a world in these magnificent lines:

"One of the girls – Comfort – asks me with a giggle what is to be prepared for lunch. Their assumption is that the real Madam has turned up, and I am just another hussy-made-good carrying a milky baby. No doubt this will be the speculation of the day".

There is much in this story that illuminates the sexual aspects of colonialism.  

"The Coptic Bride" 

"My mother adored Laila. Halfway through the afternoon she called to anoint me with her unqualified joy. I suspected it was hardly Laila she adored, but the prospect of a brown daughter-in-law and exotic grandchildren requiring the occasional visit to New York. Mother,"

Set in Sydney, Austraila, one of the world's most cosmopolitan of cities, a long absent son has just returned from Ethiopia with an Ethiopan fiancé, a Coptic bride to be.   Everyone in this very educated family is curious about her.   They discretely scrutinize and analyse her appearance and try to discern why the brother likes her. The story is really about orientalizing those different from us.  

"The Clock Tower"

"There was an answering service with the message in English, in Flemish and then in French, as was the way in this city. The English message said: Hello, you’ve reached Toby Vlaminck but I’ve taken off again. I’ll be in Ghana until November so I guess it’s not worth leaving a message unless it’s October twenty-something. Oh, and Didier’s still with M.S.F. in Rwanda"

"The Clock Tower" is a very interesting, closely observed story about how a too young to have this happen man adjusts when his wife and young son did of cancer within a three week period.   The man is acutely self-aware and is fascinating to follow his stream of consciousness.  

"Claudia Cardiales Flesh Colored Lips"

"Marina came in when he was eating grapes in front of an old Claudia Cardinale film. Unannounced, since last weekend had ended in a cloud of mutual, unrepenting bad will. Sebastien Tempels wanted to hear how she would get around it.

‘Her breasts look like a pair of Tupperware containers,’ she said as she tossed her bag."

I like this opening line as I see it as the sort of thing my wife would say if she walked in on me watching a Claudia Cardinale movie. I think younger readers not into Italian cinema may not know who she is so a pic is needed (OK I want a pic of her on my blog)

The story line of this well plotted work concerns the relationship of a medical student and his girl friend.it is a very subtle account of a complicated fragile reationship.

"Nathalie"

"But outside Nathalie looked so much older. The lines Mona had never noticed on her face had become grave and hard. Her eyelids were fallen, discoloured furrows below them, and the cheeks were those of a gaunt woman whose good health had been stolen. Mona was silent. Everything had been taken from them. This was the day that would never pass."

"Narhalie", like several of the other stories in the collection, centers on a person returning to their ancestral home after a long absence.  In the "The Coptic Bride" the city was Sydney, here it is Lome, the capital of and largest city in Togo.   Returning home is not easy.  It is often fraught with guilt, a struggle to return to old relationships with parents, siblings, and old friends.  Often people leave as one person and return as another seemingly more worldly and sophisticated idividual.  Things are not as they once were and maybe never will be.  These themes are very skillfully developed in this story.  I do not wish to spoil the plot of this story.  The close is very moving. 

"Gorgeous  Eyes"   

"I turn the book around to her. In her grasp it falls open on the page of a young Somali bride, modestly dressed, surrounded by pugnacious sisters.

‘Do you see?’ I say. ‘This book is a glossy celebration of Africa’s cruelty. That woman is about to be raped by her fifty-year-old groom. She has been circumcised by those women surrounding her. She will know pain for the rest of her life.’

My wife looks at me with horror. She shuts the book."

"Gorgeous Eyes" is narrated by the owner of a hotel on the west coast of Africa.    One of the dominant themes of the collection is about European spectatorship of Africa.   It is also about returning Africans trying to see their culture through the eyes of Europe.   This story is a brilliant account of orientalizing, of turning people into art objects.  As the story opens a well known "art" photographer arrives at the hotel.   She is there to take pictures of tribal people for high end coffee table books.  The portrayal of the photographer is very subtle.   We wonder about her intentions.   Is she a kind of parasite or is she a great artist cherishing a dying culture or is she both?   There are some very interesting plot turns in this powerful story. 

""innocent"

         "Innocent" is about a chauffeur of that name.   He works for an expat woman.   The story is set in in Sefwi Awiaso, Ghana.   In just a few pages we are shown how the driver is infantilized by his

employer, as if his biggest desire in life is to have a new pair of Peter Fonda sunglasses every year.

He has gotten a woman in his home village pregnant and his boss tells him to marry her.   The girl is 

sixteen.   She took an herbal drink that is reputed to cause a miscarriage but it did not work.  

Innocent fears if he does not marry the girl, her father will kill him.  The interest in this very

subtle story is in seeing the patronizing way Innocent is treated by his employer.  

I greatly enjoyed this collection and I recommend it without reservation.  I hope to read more of 

Authors work soon.

Catherine McNamara grew up in Sydney, ran away to Paris to write, and ended up in West Africa running a bar. She was an embassy secretary in pre-war Mogadishu, and has worked as an au pair, graphic designer, gallery manager, teacher, translator and shoe model. 

Praised by Hilary Mantel, her short story collection The Cartography of Others (May 2018, Unbound) was a Finalist in the People’s Book Prize 2019-20, was awarded Grand Prize in the Eyelands International Book Awards (Greece) and listed on the Literary Sofa’s Best of 2018 Reads. Her book Pelt and Other Stories (2013) was long-listed for the Frank O’Connor Award and semi-finalist in the Hudson Prize. Her short stories and flash fiction have been Pushcart-nominated and published widely in the U.K., Europe, U.S.A. and Australia. Her flash fiction collection Love Stories for Hectic People is out in autumn 2020. 

Catherine speaks Italian and French and lives in Veneto, Italy, where she hosts summer retreats for writers and artists in her African-art-filled farmhouse. She is an online writing mentor and coach

Author's  blog

Mel u

“Two Hanged Women" A Short Story by Henry Handel Richardson - 1929 - 8 Pages

 Website of Aussie Author Reading Challenge  2020

“Two Hanged Women" A Short Story by Henry Handel Richardson - 1929 - 8 Pages

   Henry Handel Richardson (pen name of Ethel Florence Lindsey Richardson) was born in Melbourne Australia in 1870. She died in 1946 of cancer. Her roots were Irish and English.   Her father was a successful doctor specializing in obstetrics who achieved some affluence through the purchasing of shares in gold mines.  Her paternal grandfather was born in Dublin.    At age 18 her mother took her to Europe to pursue musical studies.     She remained in Europe and England until 1912 when she returned briefly to Australia to research her family history.  She published her master work, The Fortunes of Richard Mahoney (1930).   It is a trilogy (over 1000 pages) and is set in the gold fields in mid Victorian Australia.      

Before posting on "Two Hanged Women" I should point out that Wikipedia in its article on her  says  that Henry Richardson should be considered a bisexual but the Australian National Dictionary of Biography explicitly says that is a pure conjecture unsupported by any concrete evidence.     She was married for many years and after her husband's death felt she  maintained daily contact with him through seances.   She was an ardent support of the suffragette movement.  

"Two Hanged Women" is a simple story that opens on a young couple out for a romantic walk along a shore. They see they are not alone so they begin to make loud kissing noises hoping it will run the intruders away.   It does work.   The man is surprised to see the other two people were women and he refers to them as just "two hanged women".      I did some quick research to see if  the expression "hanged women" might have a meaning unknown to me in Australian slang of the 1920s and 1930s.     A bit of quick research seems to indicate it just refers to two women "hanging out"-(being somewhere for no purpose).    If I am missing something here please correct me.

I really liked her prose style and the story line does seem to support the notion that the two women are lovers at least spiritually.    I want to quote a bit from the story so other can see if they might enjoy her work and also to allow some play to the notion that this story is about a lesbian relationship.

 "I’m afraid of him . . . when he looks like that. Once . . . when he kissed me . . . I could have died with the horror of it. His breath . . .his breath . . . and his mouth — like fruit pulp — and the black hairs on his wrists . . . and the way he looked — and . . . and everything! No, I can’t, I can’t . . . nothing will make me . . . I’d rather die twice over. But what am I to do? Mother’ll NEVER understand. Oh, why has it got to be like this? I want to be happy, like other girls, and to make her happy, too . . . and everything’s all wrong. You tell me, Betty darling, you help me, you’re older . . . you KNOW . . . and you can help me, if you will . . . if you only will!” And locking her arms round her friend she drove her face deeper into the warmth and darkness, as if, from the very fervour of her clasp, she could draw the aid and strength she needed.

Betty had sat silent, unyielding, her sole movement being to loosen her own arms from her sides and point her elbows outwards, to hinder them touching the arms that lay round her. But at this last appeal she melted; and gathering the young girl to her breast, she held her fast.— And so for long she continued to sit, her chin resting lightly on the fair hair, that was silky and downy as an infant’s, and gazing with sombre eyes over the stealthily heaving sea."

"Two Hanged Women" can be read here

Old Tales of a Young Country by Marcus Clarke (a collection of stories about transported convicts to Australia)1918

 

Old Tales of a Young Country by Marcus Clarke - Stories of Convict Life - 1871

Website of The Aussie Reads Challenge 2020

As I mentioned in my post on Barbara Baynton, when a nationwide  weekly publication, The Bulletin, in 1886 asked its readers to submit stories about life in the Bush or the Outback a big amount of material came to be published.    Before then the main source for publication for Australian writers was the Australian Monthly.   In addition to stories about the life in the outback there was a lot of interest in stories about the lives of convicts transported from the United Kingdom to Australia.   

I have done a bit of research on convict tales and it seems one of the best known writers in this area is Marcus Clarke (1846 to 1881).   Clarke was himself an immigrant from England.    Clarke was born into a very affluent family but in his early teens the family fell onto financial ruin (my basic source of information on Clarke is The Australian Online Biographical Dictionary, a great resource).   Clarke was considered a totally spoiled boy with little grasp of how he might make his way in the adult world.   His family decided he should immigrate to Australia (or they wanted to get rid of him!) so at sixteen he left England for New South Wales.to live with one of his uncles who was well established already.   Clarke tried with bad results several careers ranging from bank clerk to managing an outback station owned by his uncle.   Clarke had always considered himself a writer (by coincidence he went to school with Gerland Manly Hopkins) and he began to contribute short pieces to magazines and newspapers.    His work was well regarded and Clarke then used some money he had received in an inheritance to buy a well known publication, The Australian Monthly.  All of his future publications, including his collection of stories about live in the first Australian Penal colony in Botany Bay, Old Tales of a Young Country, would from then on come out in his publication.   

Old Tales of A Young Country is a collection of 15 stories about life in the penal colony.   Most of the stories are written as short based in reality tales of particular persons in the colony.   The majority  of the stories center on convicts but he also writers about the British officials.   The diction and grammar of  the stories are perfect newspaper journalistic prose.    The stories in the collection I read were all very well written, easy to follow and did let us see  the convicts as real people of whom one might sincerely say "There but for the grace of God go I".

The lead story, "The Settlement of Sydney" details who was on the three ships that were the first to arrive and what supplies and animals the ships carried   We get a clear sense of the business like way the colony was intended to be run.   Punishments for the smallest offenses were very harsh.    Many of the convicts had been transported for very petty crimes.   As Clarke tells us, some convicts really thrived in the new country and others did not last a month.

The second story in the collection, "George Barrington, Pickpocket and Historian" is about a gentlemen  bandit from England.   Clarke's stories are written as if they are true stories but they are really stories based on facts but enhanced by Clarke's imagination.    After a series of crimes, all relayed in a very colorful way and all crimes against the decadent rich, Barrington is sentenced to seven years transportation at hard labor.   While at sea on the way to Australia, the convicts seize the ship with the idea of going to America.   Barrington talks his fellow convicts out of this idea and into surrendering the ship back to the officers.   The authorities are so impressed by this that on arrival Barrington is made supervisor of convicts.   He marries, raises a family, goes on to a life of comfort in his new home and ends up according to the story writing the first history of the Sydney Penal Colony.

These stories very much  the stories of a newspaper man, clear, direct, no fancy artistic flourishes, no references to Roman poets.   They are told with a passion for  the truth and an empathy for the dispossessed.  There is no condemning of the convicts or patronizing of their experience.      I endorse them to anyone wanting to read some good short stories and learn something about life in Australia in the 18th century

Old Tales of a Young Country can be read online at the web page of the library of the University of Sydney. 

I also want to suggest that anyone interested in learning more about the transportation of convicts to Australia read the totally great book by Robert Hughes, Fatal Shore.