The Month's New Reading

With Judy Tudor

Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth have a solid place as Australian school-book heroes because they finally managed to cross the Blue Mountains in 1813, but the modem Sydney schoolchild, who frequently is taken up to Katoomba—one of the city’s favourite Sunday afternoon drives—in a matter of a couple of hours, can be forgiven for wondering what the fuss is all about.

mHE modern road ascends from A Emu Plains and descends at last down onto the Bathurst side without any spectacular gradients, and without towering mountains to bar the way at any point. No where are the Blue Mountains greater than 5,000 ft. in height.

Yet when the trio made their epic journey the convict settlement was already 25 years old—and the attempt may have been put off longer if it had not become obvious that there was need of new land for expanding flocks.

The Blue Mountains are part of the Great Dividing Range that stretches for 3,000 miles right along the Eastern Coast of Aus tralia from Cape York, in the north of the continent, to Wilson’s Promontory in southern Victoria.

By chance, behind the original settlement at Sydney, the moun tain chain takes the form of a giant bow—the Blue Mountains— which successfully hemmed the young settlement in and prevented colonists and alike from seeing anything of the vast con tinent that lay on the other side.

What Was On

The Other Side

The exploration of Ausralia—an ancient, worn-down land, with hostffe natives, no ferocious animals and no serious endemic diseases—was different. What ?ri a m?r w Afferent, and difficult is admn ably explained in a small volume in the World Classics S6 vi ie i Oxford University Press called Australian Explorers. explorers themselves write that it is a collection naT Thp °JS 1 f reports an <* jour- The , sele ction and editing has been done bv Kathlepn vhJ*

Pt™*’ Associate Protesor

Histoiy at the University of Mel bourne, and she also contributes an excellent introduction and notes throughout the book. s As writers, the explorers came in every grade of good, bad and in different, but what they say in this (d ” e - no doubt to editor’s careful selection) never fails to be interesting. Burke, extra

ordinarily enough, kept no journal at all, leaving this aspect of his expedition, to his partner Wills. (Burke and Wills perished on the banks of Cooper’s Creek in 1861 after successfully crossing the con tinent from south to north).

Broadly, the exploration of Aus tralia was accomplished in 90 years. By 1876, when Ernest Giles made his second crossing of the continent, this time from West to East, there was plenty of map still to be filled in, but the big tasks had been completed.

When Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth crossed the Blue Moun tains in 1813 they had provided the

key to the vast interior. Then followed exploration of the river that rise on the western watershe( —the Lachlan, the Macquarie ant the Castlereagh, and through then the Murrumbidgee, Darling ant the Murray.

By 1860, Evans, Oxley, Hume ant Hovell, Cunningham, Sturt, Eyre Leichhardt and others had writtei their names all round the Aus tralian mainland and penetrate* to its centre. Only the deser stretches between the centre anc the north, and the centre and thi west, remained to be conquered and this was achieved in tin following 14 or 15 years.

In all exploration in Australia water or lack of it, at some time played a part. In the latter deser' explorations it played the supremt part.

The sort of part it did play ii. illustrated in Giles’ accounts of hi;, numerous expeditions in the Centr* and across the Continent and per haps best of all in an account o:< his second journey which ended, in tragedy, in 1874.

In late 1883, with three com panions including a young man called Gibson, he pushed out front the Centre westward and in Aprii had reached the Rawlinson Range;; in WA. Smoked horse was thefi only food, and water was scarce Giles realised that he would haw to go back but before he did h., decided to push quickly 100 mile;; further west.

Two of the party and most o:c the horses stayed at the depo< while Giles left with Simpson ano four horses.

OUes did not want Simpson bui the latter had made a scene when it was suggested one of the otherr should make the excursion. Gibson was the type of man who appearn to be the curse of even the mose carefully chosen expeditions. First!; entrusted with the supplies, h»i packed only half enough smokeo; horse to see the trip through. Ano; when the time came for turning! two of the pack horses loose to finoj their own way back, he insisted oik changing his own riding horse fo;c one of the spare animals. Thu animal he chose, then died unde.e near the end of the excursion! . Tl ) e two men for a while took ii in turns to ride the remaining! horse, but when about 30 miles fronn where they had left their cache o:c water, and about 70 miles fronn base, with their water finishedb Giles decided they would neveie make it and sent Gibson on alomr on the horse, instructing him never to deviate from the hoo;o prints made on the outwaro; journey, and to send a relief partjp back with water for him.

Giles reached the water cacher next day, rested a while and then; staggered on on foot, a cask hold-t u allons °f water strapped tot ms back and with about one pounor

of smoked horse meat in a bag.

This he was forced to eat raw as he could not afford the water to cook it.

In the first four days he was buoyed up by the thought of meet ing the relief party. Then, to his horror, he found that the marks of Gibson’s horse left the main tracks and went off at a tangent ESE. He followed them as far as he dared, in the hope they would turn back, but they did not, and with despair in his heart Giles re turned to the main tracks. It was the last sign ever seen of Gibson.

With water and food now gone, Giles staggered on and finally reached water in the Rawlinson Ranges—still 20 miles from his base.

“I stayed there drinking and drinking, until 10 a.m.,” he writes, “when I crawled away over the stones down from the water. I was very footsore, and could only go at a snail’s pace. Just as I got clear of the bank of the creek, I heard a faint squeak and looking about I saw, and immediately caught, a small dying wallaby whose mar supial mother had evidently thrown it from her pouch. It only weighed about two ounces, and was scarcely furnished yet with fur. The instant I saw it, like an eagle I pounced upon it and ate it, living, raw, dying—skin, fur, bones, skull and all. The delicious taste of the creature I shall never forget. I only wished I had its mother and father to serve in the same way.”

Refreshed by the wallaby and the water, Giles went on, stumbling into camp at daylight the follow ing day. Weak and ill, with his two companions, he set out almost immediately to search for Gibson, then unsighted for 10 days. No trace was found and they gave up the search.

A tract of desert, east of the Rawlinson Range and on the Tropic of Capricorn was given the name Gibson’s Desert. One feels that Gibson scarcely merited the honour, Australian Explorers is a com panion piece to Sources of Aus tralian History, which was treated in the same manner (extracts from the writings of early arrivals in Australia). This was reviewed in PIM In February.

The only thing missing from the present volume is an index. It seems extraordinary in a book of reference of this kind, that a good index should have been omitted. (AUSTRALIAN EXPLORERS, published by Oxford University Press. Australian price, 14/-.)

Wilson Version—

Without Clark Gable

READERS who cherish memories of Fletcher Christian of the Bounty mutineers as a youthful Clark Gable, will probably have an

illusion or two shattered if Erie Wilson’s Adams of the Bounty (re cently published in book form after running as a serial in The Sydney Morning Herald ), is accepted.

Mutiny on the Bounty was, of course, based on the story by Nord hoff and Hall, the well-known American writers of the 30’s, now both dead. It was part of a trilogy, the other two stories being Pit cairn’s Island and Men Against the Sea.

Wilson calls his book a novel, but it does in fact follow the known sequence of events surrounding this most famous of all mutinies, and what followed on Pitcairn Is.

Some of the events are telescoped

to allow him to cover in one book what Nordhoff and Hall did in two, but, with one essential difference, his account does not differ greatly from that of the earlier writers.

The essential difference is—and it is all-important—in characterisa tion. In the Nordhoff and Hall version, Christian was the ring leader in the mutiny and leader of the little community after it established itself on remote Pit cairn.

In the Wilson story, Christian is a weak character, his leadership the result of nothing more than his rank. On the Bounty, before the mutiny, he was (according to Wilson) an irresponsible junior

jfficer, much favoured by Bligh who Shrust hospitality and favours upon lim. Far from being the architect )f the mutiny, he joined only at ;he last moment, apparently in a irief spasm of love-sickness for the jirl he had parted from in Tahiti.

Once on Pitcairn, his nature jhanged completely and he be lame withdrawn, moody and, so ar as leadership was concerned, a veak reed. He spent most of his ime regretting the incident that lad cut him off for ever from Sngland.

Adams is presented as the strong nan of the party, and is so much is Adams was the only mutineer urviving when the community was liscovered 18 years later (by the imerican whaler Topaz in 1808), here may be much in what Wilson ays. (According to Wilson, Adams hipped on the Bounty as Alexander Smith and he reverted 0 Adams after the discovery of he Pitcairn colony; another ver ion is that he sailed as Adams, ut his real name was Alexander ►mith. At all events, his de cendants have been always known s Adams).

Ned Young is the intermediate haracter in Wilson’s version, as ie was in the Nordhoff and Hall tory—the only new twist Wilson ave to this mutineer is to provide im with some West Indian negro lood. Quintal, McCoy and Wh ams are again the villians of the lece, and Bligh himself, the lustermg Charles Laughton— enerous and just in some things; npredictably petty and bullying 1 others.

Much more to blame for the lutiny than any harshness of High—probably no worse to serve nder than other Navy officers of is time—was that the company ad been too long in the tropics: ix months in the lotus land of ahiti, gathering bread-fruit trees nd vahines. For the ordinary sea ien, it was a paradise unlikely to

be equalled anywhere else on earth.

For the two officers in the mutiny their behaviour can best be at tributed to a momentary aberra tion of love.

The Bounty sailed from Tahiti at last, and when near one of the Tongan islands on April 28, 1789, the mutiny took place. Bligh and 18 others were set adrift in a long boat; others were forced to stay on the ship, which put back to Tahiti. Here the unwilling and some of the mutineers stayed, but realising that sooner or later they would be found, Christian, Young, Adams and half-a-dozen others, with their Tahitian wives, one child, six Tahitian men and three wives, sailed off to find Pitcairn.

There they removed a great deal from the vessel before it was set afire (accidentally, according to Wilson, during a drunken orgy by Quintal, McCoy and Williams).

The rest is history. Within a couple of years, the Tahitians had murdered all but four of the Euro pean men (Adams, Young, Quintal and McCoy survived); then with ihe help of the women, the four survivors murdered all the Tahitian men. Soon McCoy and Quintal had also met violent deaths and Young died of TB in 1800, leaving Adams to carry on as patriarch of the clan.

Oddly as it may seem, the Tahitian wives of Young and Adams produced no children; but in the years im mediately after the massacres, the four European survivors lived in discriminately with all the women and by the time the British Navy ship called in 1814, there was a large brood of children from tots to teenagers—children who bore the names still famous on Pitcairn and Norfolk Islands —Christian, Young, McCoy, Quintal, Adams, McKay.

In his last years Young had kept a journal, but an accurate account of the life on Pitcairn evidently stopped with his death. It is in teresting to note that both the Wilson and the Nordhoff and Hall versions stop at the same point, and that in both, the story after the death of Young is extremely sketchy.

Adams, it is said, then saw the light and became religious and a strict disciplinarian and such was the effect that he had on the little com munity, that when the long arm of the British Navy finally caught up with him in 1814, Adams was deemed to have paid his debt for his sins and he was allowed to remain there.

So far as the merits of the two versions are concerned, Wilson suffers not at all in comparison with his two more famous American pre decessors. Adams of the Bounty is most excellently done. r C: ' <ADAMS OP THE BOUNTY. Published by Angus and Robertson, Ltd. Australian price, 17/6.)

Nevil Shute—in

Intercontinental Size

THE title of Nevil Shute’s new novel, The Rainbow and the Rose, has no apparent connec tion with the story—except through some lines of Rupert Brooke; When colour goes home into the eyes, And lights that shine are shut again With dancing girls and sweet birds’ cries Behind the gateway of the brain; And that no-place which gave them birth, shall close The rainbow and the rose: — Still may Time hold some golden space Where I’ll unpack that scented store, etc., etc., etc.

If that still does not quite make sense, the gentle reader need have no fear—the story is not as com plicated as all that, and the best thing to do with it is to forget the title and let Mr. Shute get on with his aeroplanes, in which department his hand has not lost its cunning.

This is the life story of an airline pilot, but it is told mostly in re trospect, as the pilot—John Pascoe— lies dying, with a broken skull, in a remote Tasmanian valley, the weather closed in and no immediate prospect of rescue.

The past is revealed—and this is a Shute touch—by the pilot who is to perform the rescue; He takes a sleeping drug and dreams himself into the past and the part of Pascoe.

Perhaps this is not as far-fetched as it sounds, so long as one believes that impressions can be stored up in the sub-conscious—Pilot Number Iwo, who tells the story, has known Pascoe for a large part of his life.

For a man as stolid as Pascoe apparently was, he had a remark ably complicated love life and this fact not only dominates the retro spective passages of the story but spills over as a climax into the present tense. However, as counter point to the whole thing, there is the vast field of aviation, from the primitive pusher-type planes of the First World War to the DC6B’s of :he present, and in this field the author is at his best.

Although all fans may not agree vith our contention that Shute has lever written as well since he came jO Australia as he did previously, all will no doubt welcome the fact ;nat the current novel has not struck him when he was in one of ns prognosticating moods. In its Yay, it is a sombre piece, but it contains none of the dire predic tions of universal disaster that did ts immediate predecessor, On the Beach.

One thing author Shute is going '0 have to watch—and that is his mowing tendency to emulate Frank

Clune by handing out potted geography lessons, gratis. It might

characters f

tion where they spout out the vital statistics of Viti Levu, but for our money, there are more subtle ways of ffettine 1 in the local colour Q g uite a g section of this novel concerns Fiji—as a direct result, no doubt, of the fact that the author tbprp vpnr visited there last year. (the rainbow and the rose, Published by wm. Heinemann, Ltd. Austraiian price, 17/6.)

r tnn fniintinn falnrioc

OTOp LOUilTirig LdlOflcS

Usi- ZZ

" *nd bacon? This is for you all you overweights, if you follow the diet set out by Dr Richard Mackarness in an d Grow Slim the most revolutionary piece of dietry since Romans gave up sticking their fingers down their throats? to be sick, so they could eat more.

The latter-day bursting of the medical fraternity into print has

not made things any easier for the general public—and Dr. Mackarness’ revolutionary ideas are a case in point as they are unleashed on the diet-conscious at the same time that other experts are announcing that a coronary occlusion lurks in every bottle of cream and a thrombosis in every fried sausage.

Dr. Mackarness discusses this aspect of affairs in his book —but dismisses it lightly.

According to him, there are just two kinds of people, Mr. Fatten- Easily and Mr. Constant-Weight. No matter how much excess carbo hydrate Mr. Constant-Weight eats, his metabolism will take care of it, burn it all up and leave nothing for surplus fat.

With Mr. Fatten-Easily it is very different. Due to a defect in his physical construction his metabolic fires burn lower all the time than those of Mr. Constant-Weight, so when he gets an excess of carbo hydrates the fires do not increase —they may even decrease—and the residue is deposited as body fat.

The only reason why fat people are fat, he says, is that they have a defective capacity for deal ing with carbohydrates. Carbo hydrate is the fat man’s poison —not only does it produce the obesity directly, it does dreadful things to the digestion of other Clements. [ The quantity of food one eats is pf no account; a good mixed diet is phooey. You can throw away your calorie charts—base your diet on three-quarters protein, one quarter fat and a bit of certain fruits and vegetables. ■ Whether or not Dr. Mackarness has produced just another fancy diet and there have been thousands of them in recent years p-his small book is quite interest ing even for a Mr. or Mrs. Con- Btant-Weight. i EAT FAT AND GROW SLIM. pub lished by The Harvill Press, London. Our copy from Wm. Collins (Overseas), Ltd.

Australian price, 13/3.)

Two for Teenagers

WHAT would you do if you came face to face with a bear in a berry patch? Fortunately, it is not a fate that is likely to overtake anyone in any neck of the woods in the South Pacific, although there is no harm in finding out how others cope.

Thirteen-year-old Forrest Judson became separated from his family during a picnic in the Californian mountains. He had an extra wind cheater, a half-eaten stick of choco late, an orange, a couple of books of matches and a ball of string. But Forrest was a Boy Scout, and he made out all right although not without adventure or before the family called out the blood-hounds.

This story—called M omntain Courage, by Quail Hawkins—will be just what the youngsters ordered.

It is illustrated with black and white line drawings. (MOUNTAIN COURAGE. Published by World’s Work, Ltd. Australian price, 13/3.) A bit more sophisticated is Blue Dragon Days (by Mabel Esther Allan), designed for late teenagers.

It even has a little romance in it — but no sex.

Jane Graydon had an English father and an Italian mother who had been cut off without a shilling by her wealthy Genoese relatives.

When Jane got a job in a travel agency in Genoa she was permitted to go by Mama on the understanding that she would have nothing to do with her relatives. Genoa is a big city—but, of course, she meets them, and when she tries to cover up her identity, complications arise.

This is an excellent book for youngsters who are “crazy to travel”.

Not so good for parents who want to keep them at home. (BLUE DRAGON DAYS. Published by Wm. Heinemann, Ltd. Australian price, 13/3.)

It's All For a

Tasmanian Kitten

fiIHE extraordinary Mr. Mark JL Corrigan who rivals John Foster Dulles in his ability to turn up in a different country on almost every second day of the week, wafts his fans to Hawaii in Honolulu Snatch.

He keeps one foot in the Aus tralian camp, nonetheless, with the dedication, which goes sweetly and coyly to “Kitten Cat of Tasmania.”

Good on you, Mark.

In his latest opus, the customer gets from Corrigan a bit of potted geography and social studies on the Territory of Hawaii. But otherwise he and Tucker go through much the same motions that they have done in all the other thrillers— about a dozen and a half—that have preceeded it. The plot concerns a kidnapping. What is more, it really happened. Mark says so, in the preface. (HONOLULU SNATCH. Published by Angus and Robertson, Ltd. Australian price, 15/-.)

A Guide for

Star Gazers

fTIHERE would be fewer neurotics, X if more people studied the stars —and we don’t mean horo scopes. It is impossible to have too inflated an idea of personal pro blems when placed against a back ground of the infinite.

James Nangle’s Stars of the Southern Heavens is not a new book —it was published first in 1929. And Nangle himself is no longer with us. When he wrote the first edition, he was Government Astronomer of NSW; the book was

revised and reprinted in 1937 and the present edition has been brought up to date, in the light of new discoveries, by the present NSW astronomer. A new chapter on radio astronomy has been added, and the photographs are also new.

The book is designed for amateur star-gazers who will have nothing more to aid them than a small tele scope, field glasses, or even the naked eye.

It is in two sections. The first, a general description of the heavenly bodies; and the second, in which the author divides the year into six parts, and provides star maps of the southern skies for each, so that the star-gazer of this Hemisphere may plot the stars, planets and constellations and know what he is looking at.

(Stars Of The Southern

HEAVENS. Published by Angus and Robertson, Ltd. Australian price, 18/9.)

Boys Who Came

In All Varieties

OTHER countries now have Boys’

Towns—there is one just out side Sydney—where boys who have no one to care for them grow into useful citizens. But the original one, of course, was 10 miles out of Omaha, Nebraska, and was the creation of an Irish-American priest, Father Joseph Flanagan.

The idea started with half a dozen boys but the town today has hundreds of residents, of all colours, creeds and backgrounds. It is a home for the unfortunate not just for the delinquent, although there are these, too —perhaps 20 per cent. It is staffed by Catholic priests and nuns, but Protestants and Jews donate as much towards its upkeep as adherents of the Roman Catholic faith.

Something about Father Flanagan —who died in 1948—and Boys’ Town have been described by Fulton and Will Oursler in 1950 and this has now been reprinted in a cheap edition.

In describing him they say: “In his simplicity, Father Flanagan was as harmless as a dove, but in the service of his Master he was also wise as a serpent. Over the years he won many a conflict with official and unofficial foes, being as astute in tactics as he was gentle and for giving in victory or defeat.”

(Father Flanagan Of Boys Town.

Published by World’s Work, Ltd.)

What's New in Paper Jackets

Escape From Germany, By Aldan

Crawley. During World War II there were 15,000 British airforce personnel in per manent POW camps in Germany. Of these less than 30 escaped to B-itain or neutral territory.

The odds against escape while a POW are therefore very great but this did not prevent an energetic minority spending almost ail the time of imprisonment think

mg, planning and working on escape pro jects.

Crawley served in a fighter squadron md was himself a prisoner in Stalag Luft [II (where he held the unofficial position »f head of Escape Intelligence Organisa ,ion) for four years. After the war (as yell as becoming an MP) he wrote an ifficial history of RAF escapes for the Air Ministry. The present book is an adaptation if that; it is a complete guide for would ic escaping POW’s and incidentally, makes mtertaining reading.

As Crawley points out, it is only the rery small minority of POW’s who want o escape. For the great majority, once a *OW, they are prepared to let the tide if war wash over them and bend all iffort to the business of survival. In view if the small proportion of escapees who nake it, the arguments as to which •arty Is right could be endless. (Fontana).

The Secret Of Democracy, By

Inzanne Labin. Madame Labin is a imminent French political writer and in his book she attempts to refute some of he charges frequently levelled at the lolitical and social institution of emocracy. She asks such questions as: ■ democracy stagnant; Is It weaker than r more corrupt than dictatorship? The nswers she gives will, of course, please hose of a like mind if they fail to con ert those of opposing views. (Comet).

Westward The Women, By Nancy

Filson Ross. This book was first issued »st year. It sets out to prove that be ftuse women accompanied their men cross the North American Continent they old the top place In American society »day. (Australian women also accom anied their men to some odd places, 'nfortunately that does not seem to have ad the same effect on Australian society, nd this, in its turn, probably proves nnething about Australian men.) (Comet).

Guide To Orchestra Music, By

rank Howes. Mr. Howes is music critic f the London “Times” but his book is at directed to High-brows, perhaps be »use. as the author says In his opening sntence: “Englishmen have never cared >r music as they care for football or film ;ars”.

It is directed to the people who like to sten to symphony orchestras or go to mcerts or collect LP records; who like ► sing or hear others sing. It is based a his book “Full Orchestra”, first pub shed 15 years ago, but enlarged and >vised for the present Fontana edition, he history of music and the instruments [ an orchestra through the ages; the Istory of orchestras and their conductors re only some of the things he discusses.

The Hungarian Revolution By

eorge Mikes. The fact that the author was »rn a Hungarian has very little to do uh the book, he says. He lives in Britain nd spent only a few days in Hungary at ie time of the 1956 revolution and some me after it in Vienna interviewing scores f refugees from all levels of society. He rites of the present generation and their trnggle against Communism, but against background of Hungarian history. Most eople—although the bloodbath of late 156 was looked on with horror by the orld—h av e allowed Hungary to sink back ehind the Iron Curtain. As Mikes puts ■: ‘The United Nations passed a few (solutions condemning the behaviour of »e Russians. Britain, in spite of the rents in Suez, was genuinely moved. The merlcans too, did their best: let In 21,500 rople, provided there were no patches on icir longs”. Nothing, of coarse, has been >lved in Hungary. Mikes’ book helps us (e the nroblem in its correct perspective.

Comet),

Tales Of The South Pacific, By

»mes A. Michener. Michener has written

some good novels but since it is unlikely that he will ever repeat the success of this first book. The story became a famous musical and now it has been filmed by Twentieth Century Fox—although not yet released in Australasia. Unfortunately, in this edition the story has been much abridged, and those episodes not directly connected with love story of Nellie For brush have been left out. What remains still hangs together but having divided by two it is a case of getting only half the pleasure. (Fontana).

Psychology Of Everyday Life,

by Sigmund Freud. Most people are capable of introducing Freud into a con versation; now they have no excuse for not going deeper into the matter. This “Fascinating Demonstration of Freud’s Methods and Theories” costs only a modest 3/6. (Comet).

A TANGLED WEB, by Nicholas Blake.

Blake’s real name is C. Day Lewis, “One of the outstanding poets of our time”.

Fortunately for thriller readers poets are pretty much at a discount in this day, and the job of earning the Lewis bread and-butter is turned over to Nicholas 8., who does it admirably. “Tangled Web”, as well as providing all the standard re

quirements of thriller readers’ manages also to get out of the ordinary rut with a new angle. (Fontana). (Our copies are from William Collins (Overseas), Ltd. Australian prices are 3/6 per copy.)