Wednesday 4 October 2017

Wide Awake


The Diary of an Australian Milkmaid

1882 to 1889
 



Spoiler Alert:
this post contains details which reveal plot elements of Wide Awake
 


Wide Awake was written with several narrative themes in mind: two serious, one frivolous.
Woolstone House, home to a wealthy squatter, c. 1908

First, the frivolous: the romantic narrative. I relied on the glorious voice and spirit of the inimitable Stella Miles Franklin whose example of independence and freethinking might be emulated today by more young women. There is an element of her My Brilliant Career, an echo of Austen and a touch of Hardy in the basic love-interest storyline.
Stella Miles Franklin

view from the Horn, Mount Buffalo



The diary form came naturally. Em's voice was important for the story. Miles Franklin had a gift for slipping colloquialisms and slang into her first person narration, great plunder for anyone seeking an echo from the past. Her verve and feistiness are unique; my protagonist is a gentler sort, but her words owe much to Franklin and - to a lesser extent - to Mary Gilmore.


scene from Gillian Armstrong's My Brilliant Career



Arthur Streeton Golden Summer, Eaglemont, 1889

Conservative colonial attitudes were amply evident in Ada Cambridge's account of her time in the colony: Thirty Years in Australia.  She provided the prototype for the character of Mrs Trumpington, although I suspect Ada would never have approved of Mrs Trumpington's fashion choices.


Ada Cambridge


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One of the dramatic themes of Wide Awake is women's suffrage, a topic which animated Australian society in the second half of the 19th century and about which Australians can be at least partially proud. I say partially, because attitudes took so long to change, and because Aboriginal women and men did not achieve full suffrage until 1962.
Louisa Lawson

Louisa Lawson and others were active in the fight and appear as themselves in Wide Awake. Em's enthusiasm and frustration must mirror what so many women were going through at the time. Thanks to such women's activism Australia became the second country in the world to give voting rights to (white) women regardless of their economic status.
*   

This story has been fermenting for a long time. I am Australian born and bred, lived there from birth for over 16 years. Yet as a child and young adult I must have existed in a bubble where the origins and conflicts of the early years of white settlement were totally ignored, and not just by me.
Joseph Lycett Aboriginals Using Fire to Hunt Kangaroos c. 1817

I only ever glimpsed the original inhabitants of this land on occasional trips to the bush where I recall blacks in country towns sitting and standing in the shade. At high school just one year of our education was dedicated to Australian history and in that year I do not recall any mention of the first people. We studied Cook, the goldrush, the Eureka stockade, the settlers: the colonial experience.
Charles Doudiet, Swearing Allegiance to the Southern Cross 1854

Gradually over the past decades I have learnt what happened during and after the foundation of white Australia. The first inklings came from novels, some autobiographical treatments, the example of the father of a schoolfriend who during the 60s championed Aboriginal causes, then film, documentaries and finally from reading firsthand accounts, newspaper reports and seeing for myself how our modern-day compatriots live, sicken and die.
photo from 1967 referendum giving Aboriginals greater citizens' rights

When we took our children in the mid-90s to see central Australia, stopping overnight in Alice Springs we encountered impoverished children with distended bellies outside a supermarket. I couldn't believe that this was Australia, my wealthy, 'lucky' homeland. How was it possible? A chance visit to Gunbalanya/Oenpelli in Arnhem Land only increased our bewilderment.

near Oenpelli/Gunbalanya, Arnhem Land
In recent years, around the time of our prime minister Rudd's apology to the Aboriginal population, (pathetically and inadequately titled 'Sorry Day') there was much talk of the Stolen Generations. Yet their sad story was just a chapter in the whole ghastly tale: what happened, from first contact for over one hundred years, was slow-motion genocide by tacit consent of the authorities and of the general population.
Sorry Day, May 26th
Few voices spoke out and few bore witness. This story can be only a partial reminder of what went on when the ambitions of the strong overwhelmed the rights of the weak.

Mary Gilmore, 1912

My treatment of this tragic, until recently untold history largely derives from the writings of a late-19th century witness, Mary Gilmore. She is equally valuable for information on aboriginal farming practices and customs.

Illustrated Australian News, Digging and Bagging Potatoes, Warrnambool, 1881. In the 1860s many of these people may have hoped to start a new life as selectors; their hopes were bitterly frustrated, as recounted in Wide-Awake

And as in any true tragedy, some of the perpetrators were also victims: the poor, often Irish selectors who were offered a living on plots of land found themselves with the arid, infertile dregs. Their anger and rebelliousness sometimes vented itself against those still less fortunate.
Frederick McCubbin Down on his Luck 1889

I am surprised that none of the above female authors are required reading for young Australians these days (at school Henry Handel Richardson was as close as we got to female Australian writers). Their accounts are valuable resources that remind us, to quote the title of Gilmore's autobiographical recollections, about Old Days and Old Ways, both good and bad.

a 19th century horsewoman
 








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