This Month’s New Reading

inother Stand-and-Deliver

y Clune

PERHAPS it is Frank dune’s wild Irish blood that gives him that perennial interest in wild ish-Australian bushrangers. The •odigious work that obviously went to the story of the Kelly gang st year, has apparently not kept e industrious Mr. dune quiet—he iw has launched the equally pre vious work called Martin Cash ncerning the bushranger of the me name. \s we have remarked before, Clune not everyone’s cup of tea; and ither are bushrangers. But if your >te lies in that direction we can lommend these detailed accounts a phase of Australian early meering—much of it unknown to 5 present generation of Aus .lians. lighwaymen, bandits, outlaws and ;orted banditry have not been un own in other parts of the world, t Australian bushrangers were lerally products of the trans lation system or of restrictive i often corrupt practices of the ly police forces. ‘etty persecutions resulted in le men—including the Kellys— oming bushrangers. Others were aped convicts. lartin Cash came into the latter egory. He arrived in Sydney on Marquis of Huntley in January, 8. According to convict records, was 19, a farm boy of County xford, Ireland, and had been tenced for seven years trans

tation for house-breaking,

hroughout his career, Cash 'ears to have alternated spells of mplary conduct with periods m he was against the law. Dur his initial seven years sentence behaved well, spent almost all it as an assigned servant and et-of-leave man and seemed set to start life at the end of it, a property of his own. owever, about the time that his ificate as a time-expired convict ime due, in March, 1834, Martin Bessie Clifford, the wife of a ittance man; she is described as glish, a lady, with every mark efinement.” issie’s subsequent career does not ■ out that description but she ently was a young woman of e spirit. With little urging she ime Martin’s de facto wife and n Martin later indulges in some lanigin with cattle, he persuades that they had best remove nselves from under the eyes of NSW police and go to Van uen’s Land. lis was a mistake. The landed

gentry of Tasmania had free con vict labour and there was no place for a free man. Finally, Martin was arrested again—stealing half-a dozen eggs was the charge—and sentenced to a further seven years He escaped, was recaptured and sent to Port Arthur. He and his com panions were among the few to escape from there; thereafter they became bushrangers with a price on their heads. While attempting to visit Bessie in Hobart Town, Martin is finally captured and sent to Norfolk Island for ten years.

Martin’s escapades happened at a time when there was public reaction against the whole system of trans portation and treatment of convicts.

A little earlier he would have been hanged without fuss. Instead in a spasm of great leniency, he was sent to Norfolk Island where he had another of his periods of tranquility, remained stubbornly on the side of authority and in a period when Norfolk Is. was at the peak of its notoriety as a hell-spot, refused to join his old companions in their stubborn resistance to authority.

Instead he went into the millinery business—weaving straw hats for prisoners and officials!

Norfolk Is. was closed as a penal settlement in 1854. Earlier that year, Martin had obtained per mission to marry Mary Bennett, assigned servant of the doctor, and he and Mary stayed on at Norfolk for some months after the rest of the convicts had gone. With a ticket-of-leave granted Martin in September, 1854, they returned to Hobart at the end of the year; here for two years Martin was in charge of some of the city’s gardeners. He then took up 160 acres of land a few miles out of the town. One son was born to the couple but he died at 16—a fact that set Martin to an overindulgence in the bottle which hastened his death in August, 1877, at the age of 69.

If you are looking for a literary masterpiece, it is best to leave Clune alone, although in his books of straight history he is not so apt to flail the reader with overworked cliches or Clunish puns. But as an account of the early convict systems that provided the foundations of New South Wales and Tasmania, Martin Cash has some merit.

The pros and cons of the early Australian convict system can be argued indefinitely; possibly dune’s conclusions in the matter are as good as any likely to be arrived at from this distance in time: The full brutality of the system was un leashed only on the minority of convicts who persisted in weakness and further crime afer they arrived in the penal settlements. For the

majority, it gave an opportunity to escape from the environment of de gradation to which they would likely have been condemned in Britain— an opportunity to make a new life in a new country. The great majority of the convicts took this opportunity and became solid citizens.

Cash probably could be regarded as a border-line case. When fortune was with him he found it easy enough to keep within the law. As soon as difficulties arose he took easy way out—as witness his addiction to drink after the death of his son. svrt^ liSh f d Angus and R obertson, Sydney. Australian price, 25/-.)

The Island-Hoppers

PEOPLE who will not read novels by Australian authors because they are Australian must have had a number of their prejudices shaken in recent years. Nonetheless, there is still an element of shock in discovering an Australian novel that is plainly “good” in any company within its own field.

Norman Bartlett, with a short novel, Island Victory, now joins the select band. His is a story of a RAAF Kittyhawk squadron whose task was to soften up the Japanese defences on an island that guards the approaches to Dutch New Guinea. The time is 1944 and General Douglas MacArthur’s island hopping tactics against the Jap anese are in full swing.

As well as a story of the squadron, it is necessarily the story of men who make it, as a whole and as individuals. No particular man is singled out for hero-treatment; a half-dozen carry the story. Char acterisation is extraordinarily good.

Here is the swift action of aerial combat; the stultifying boredom that makes up 90 per cent, of war fare : the petty irritations and jealousies as between Americans and Australians; and the reactions of men of varying character, outlook and background to the exigencies of war in a tropical country.

It is a story that holds the in terest while still keeping within the limits of history and feasibility; it has excitement and deep reflection, and above all, authentic background.

It should make a special appeal to New Guinea men who served in the area during the war. It is the only book that we have read that mentions the fall of Rabaul and the half-dozen RAAF pilots who took their obsolete Wirraway planes into the air in late January, 1942, to attempt to intercept the attack of over 100 Japanese bombers. This is an incident—small in the over all picture of the Pacific War—that is apparently destined to be for gotten by all except the few

hundred directly involved, and the widows of the men who did not come back.

It is probably significant that the best post-war Australian novels are written by men, about men —very often about men at war. The great romantic Australian novel has yet to be written. But in the realm of action and adventure, plus the penetrating insight of Australian author into Australian men, a few are delivering the goods. And this book comes into that category. (Published by Angus and Robertson, Sydney. Australian price, 13/6.)

The Pattern is

Familiar

A COMPLETE history from the time the first Polynesian sighted the group, through the dis covery of Cook in 1777, to the pre sent day is provided by American author A. Grove Day in Hawaii and Its People.

Written primarily for American consumption, it nonetheless is of interest to other Pacific dwellers who are apt to forget that Hawaii was a Pacific Island first, and the prospective 49th State of the Ameri can Union a great deal later.

Although it is possibly half a century ahead of other Pacifil terri tories, Hawaii has followed much the same pattern of growth—at least until American annexation in 1900. From that date, of course, because of American investment and the establishment of naval and military bases there, the group de veloped along lines not strictly according to orthodox Pacific Islands. However, it is well to re member that the wealth of Hawaii is still based on sugar and pine apples—and that the supply of coconut-frond hats and sun-tan oil to Hollywood beauties vacationing on Waikiki Beach is still a minor in dustry.

We retrace in this book the old footprints down the well-used path: Discovery by Europeans, the first sporadic visits being followed by scattered settlement, often by men on the wrong side of the law; the supply of firearms to rival chiefs; a sandalwood boom; the introduc tion of European vices and Euro pean diseases; the arrival of missionaries; the gradual settlement of a solid European community, and then, finally, the long fight for annexation by one of the Great Powers.

Hawaii had variations on this theme, of course. But generally it followed the established pattern.

And this is what Mr. Day has to say about industries: “ ‘Grow diversified crops,’ was the cry raised in 1898 and many times thereafter when it seemed that the territory was dangerously seeking its future on a very few staple pro

ducts. But to base island agricul ture on a variety of crops was more easily said than done. . . After the McKinley Tariff took away protec tion of Hawaiian products, a flurry of experimentation began. Tea planting from seed brought from Ceylon was tried at Kona in 1892.

A company for growing sisal was started in 1892. . . Rubber trees were introduced in the 20th century and the raising of cotton and rice was revived. A good quality tobacco was developed. Recently, export of toothsome macadamia nuts and fresh papayas, as well as splashly orchids and other flowers has brought in good income. . . But diversified agriculture on the main land pattern has not worked out.”

Where have we heard that sort of thing before?

South Pacific islands dwellers can learn a lot from Hawaii —and from this book. It is not without signific ance that by the time this is in print, Professor Y. Baron Goto, a coffee expert from Kona, Hawaii, will be advising coffee growers in the Highlands of New Guinea. (See PIM, Dec., 1955, page 151). Coffee is Hawaii’s third biggest crop; about 8,000,000 lbs weight being exported annually to USA for blending with South American varieties.

FOOTNOTE: We were amused to note that Mr. Day’s publishers were victims of the popular “Paradise” phobia when considering anything about the Pacific: The dust jacket of the book bears the legend: Hawaii and Its People—Paradise and Paradox of the Pacific. (Published by Duell, Sloan & Pearce, New York; Little, Brown, in Boston.

American price, $5.) t Mr. Roy Carlyon, 23-year-old rail way engineer and son of Senior- Sergeant A. Carlyon, of the NZ Police, has been selected as one o'; ten men for the New Zealand Antarctic Expedition. He spent some of his early life with his parents in the Cook Islands. He is a keen alpinist.