BOOKS: 1P ETER STEELESouthern lightsGreat Southern La ndings: An Anthology of AntipodeanTravel, jan Bassett, jed. I, Oxford Uni ve rsit y Press AustraliI YY.'i. JSIIN () I
down the sa me, and retiring ditto.Such a woman, to a studious man,was inva luable. He fe lt he mustpossess her for his very own, andthey were married. 'I would guess that, as many peoplein the past who learned the clementsof writing took it for gra ntedthat they then should write, most ofwhat was written was a mess-justas most drivers, conversationalists,and cooks settle for mediocrity, againon the hestertonian principle thatif a thing is worth doing it is worthdoing badly.Such worthies have fo und noplace in thc315 pages of Grea t SouthernLandings, which, life being short,is just a well. [tis an expertly clipped,m ounted, introduced and arrayedsa mpler of what people have had tosay when they have for a whileemerged from that invisible Arkwhich continues to cruise the oceansor the air, the dominant physicalreali tics of our exceedingly odd I ittleplanet.For reasons which need puzzleno Australian, the dust jacket isadorned, handsom ely, by a postNolan, post-Tucker 1994 paintingby Garry Shead, in which cockatooscry about a wcll-kitted-out man whois tilting towards a bay: behind hima woman is holding on to her hat.God knows what Pope Zachariaswould make of it all. I have, however,a uspi cion that Dante would give itall a thumb -up, accompanied bythe eq uivalent, in the dolce stilnuovo, of 'She'll be right! ' After all,it was his business, if it could bebrought off, to get at least selectedmembers of us into Paradise. •The Oxford Book of Exploration,Robin Hanbury-Tc nison (cd.),Oxford Un iversity Press,paperback edition, 1994.lSI\ 0 19 282396 S RRI' $22.95A llOOKISHCH ILD in harmlessPerth during the Fifties, I becameaware of some intricacies by readinga dead but vivid language, Latin.'Explorator', the dictionary said, 'aspy: a scout.' I stared with refreshedinterest at local monuments to Australianex plorers. What, I wondered,had they spied out, what maskingsurface had they peeled back, andhow were they agents of disclosure?Their burly frames and spade- likebeards had nothing to say in rep ly.These da ys, of course, the airwould be thick with replies, m ost ofthem reverberant with political agenda. The main thing divulged by thisor that explorer would be personal orsocietal compulsion . Red-eyed, darkhearted,white- nostril led, they wouldstalk or clump or blunder throughsava nnah, desert, taiga, sierra, notchingup territorial conquests, blazingmasculinist trails, striking out forthe Fatherland or the Motherland,and mapping their own psychic terrainseven while they put bread inthe cartographers' mouths.It may be so. And any reader ofRobin Hanbury-Tcnison's aggregationof explorers over the ccntu rieswill find plenty of material to bolstersuch a view of things. Although,surely, the last sort of personalityo ne would wantduring prolonged explora tion would be the excitable,the whole affa ir must usual ly be driven by tight-woundpassion. Hanbury-Tenison,himself a much-exposed explorer,is just the man tofinger the spirit's energies.These, sometimes, have todo with personal resolutencss,but often with the' spying' propensity, the reportbearing,especially if it isoddities or frailties whicharc to be spied out.Hence, for instance, theopenings of many of the passages hequotes from his restless ensemble.William of Rubruck, a Flemish Franciscanfriar, en route to a TartarKhan in the middle of the thirteenthcentury, muses on ' the Tebet, apeople in the habit of eating theirdead parents, so that for piety's sakethey should not give their parentsany other sepulchre than their bowels.'In 1872, the distinguished Englishnaturalist Alfred Russell Wallace,taking stock of the accomplishmentsof those he knows best, hoversbetween humility and complacencywhen he says that 'During thelast century, and e pecially in thelast thirty years, our intellectual andmaterial advancement has been tooquickly achieved for us to rea p fullbenefit of it. ' Dr David Livingstoneheof the presumption-offers us thehearte ning reminder, 'It is wellknown that if one in a troop of lionsis killed the others take the hint andleave that part of the country.' AndTheodore Roosevelt, out of politicsat fifty-four, and tackling Brazil toavert boredom, reports, 'On 27 February19 14, shortly after midday, westarted down the RiverofDoubtintothe unknown' (things turned out wellenough- the river was later named'Ri o Roosevelt'.)Not the first or last to have madelittle jokes about the ways in whichOUP can slice across human behaviours-thepre cnt volume refers toworks on Card Games, Fly-Fishing,Nursing, and Sailing Terms- I amthe first to grant that there are manyways of slanting in to the heart of thehuman affair. The Oxford Bool< ofExploration docs this with efficiency,V OLUME 5 N UMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 49
- Page 2 and 3: ~ LORETO ~ ,~ , ~~,:: : 11,;: , Hal
- Page 4 and 5: C OMMENT: 1A magazine of public aff
- Page 6 and 7: ca tive structures of oppression',
- Page 8 and 9: LettersHate mailFrom Noel TurnbullP
- Page 10 and 11: haves and have nots which make secu
- Page 12 and 13: Vi EWPOINTNeither a borrower,nor a
- Page 14 and 15: AN OPPORTUNITY TO LIVE & WORK INANO
- Page 16 and 17: Home truthsL '" "'" MOOCconfirmed c
- Page 18 and 19: T HE CAROLINE CHISHOLM S ERIES : 9G
- Page 20 and 21: I suspect too that the bishops eta]
- Page 22 and 23: their experience. The Church would
- Page 24 and 25: REPORTJiM D AVIDSONScholars on the
- Page 26 and 27: Gareth Evans, above,on another occa
- Page 28 and 29: Speaking in 1965 of Dr Evatt's term
- Page 30 and 31: gardcd as a procedural question) an
- Page 32 and 33: At San Francisco, Evatt was acutely
- Page 34 and 35: PoETRYIllacera to spiri toThe Tenor
- Page 36 and 37: Mrs Laszlo's torteAs A CH'W I WAS A
- Page 38 and 39: I understood Mrs Laszlo from The Sc
- Page 40 and 41: THE CHURCHT , o"co"" mSOME LETTERS
- Page 42 and 43: STORYTREVOR HAYSome desolate shadeI
- Page 44 and 45: and laugh with his strutting aboutl
- Page 46 and 47: P OETRYJACK HlBilERDEigh t poems fo
- Page 50 and 51: and without too much irritatingecon
- Page 52 and 53: BooKs: 3JIM D AV IDSONA timely life
- Page 54 and 55: BooKs: 4R AY C ASS INGoody GoodiesL
- Page 56 and 57: confronts Kafka with images fromhi
- Page 58 and 59: teen life: substance abuse (specifi
- Page 60 and 61: One's old manD'Artagnan 's Daughter
- Page 62 and 63: Show 'n' hell timeI ST AS OTHER RWG
- Page 64: &Aurora BoolzsSpecial Book OfferAus
Change language