Frank Clune Does It Again

One of these years, surely, Australian author Frank Clune Australian autnor Trank triune will do the weary Australian

book-reviewing fraternity a good

turn by not writing a single

, , J b book.

WE will then all climb to the top of the nearest church steeple and sing For He's A Jolly Good Fellow and similar paeans of praise. w ... .. • • f i A Meanwhile, it is our painful duty to record that Frank has produced y et another book-his 57th-which is entitled Bound for Botany Bay, and is sub-titled Narrative of a Voyage m 1798 aboard the Death Ship Hillsborough .

The Hillsborough, of course, was a convict transport, and Frank calls her a death ship because 100 people died in her during her voyage from England to Australia.

Frank’s narrative of the voyage is based mainly on a diary kept by a convict called William Noah, which is now in Sydney’s Dixon Library.

Much of the diary is fairly dull reading, but Frank makes it even more unreadable by interpolating all sorts of irrelevant material between his quotations from it.

“I trust my readers will forgive me for deserting the Hillsborough

to dilate on the mutinous doings aboard the Marquis Cornwallis,” he says at the beginning of chapter Three, and before he has gone another page he is “dilating” on the voyage of the missionary ship to Tahiti in 1796 and on how the Tahitians “embraced Christianity” under King Pomare. This is typical.

Despite all the digressions, however the Hillsborough eventually reaches her destination though this turns out to be Sydney Town rather than Botany Bay.

J Irrelevant Passages From , hen unti , the * nd of the bookj Frank meanders , hrough a cent ury or so 0 f Australian history, trac j„g the story of a highwayman called Spencer Wills (who survived the voyage in the Hillsborough ) his w jf e , children, and their descendants, jf anyone else had written Bound j or Botany Bay, it is safe to say that the publishers would have sent it hack to the author with orders to delete all irrelevant passages and gross padding.

But Frank's publishers apparently aren’t game to do that with him, or, maybe, after 56 other books by him. they’ve found that the Aus tralian public will read anything.— RL. (bound for botany bay. Angus and Robertson, Sydney. 42/-.)