The long, long

trail to Pitcairn with Frank Clune

I have never been quite sure who it is who reads the never-ending stream of books by Australia’s genial and in defatigable author Frank Chine.

BUT whoever it is, they apparently think more of them than the book reviewers generally do, and they must buy more of them than any book reviewer could ever believe possible, otherwise Frank would not now have produced his 59th book, which is entitled Journey to Pitcairn.

As far as I can make out, the raison d’etre of Frank’s latest book is a journey he made to Pitcairn a couple of years ago.

This apparently inspired him to read up everything he could about the Pitcairners’ antecedents, and, as always happens with him, his passion for knowledge led him into all sorts of strange byways, which had only the remotest connection with the subject at hand.

This wouldn’t matter, of course, if Frank—generous soul that he is— didn’t insist on sharing his irrelevant knowledge with his readers. But he does.

Journey to Pitcairn begins pro misingly and sensibly enough with the departure of the Bounty from Spithead in 1787 to collect bread fruit for the West Indies.

Digressions

But Frank has only progressed two paragraphs on this tack before he is back in the year 1688 when “William Dampier, the celebrated buccaneer ... returned to England full of enthu siasm for the breadfruit”.

From there, he jumps forward again to 1769, when Cook visited Tahiti; then there are two more paragraphs about the Bounty before Frank again digresses to give a thumbnail sketch of the career of her commander, William Bligh, So Frank burbles on like a Monday night stew—with the voyage of the Bounty, the subsequent mutiny and the settlement on Pitcairn providing the main ingredients of his book, and stray facts about all manner of other things being thrown in to add to the flavour.

Chapter 11, for example, is all

■ay facts —mainly about the history Tahiti from 1606 (when Quiros, cording to Frank, discovered that and) to the Lady Penrhyn’s visit 1788. But there is also a para aph or two about Frank’s pilgri age to Cook’s death-place in Hawaii 1950.

Chapter XI describes Bligh’s voyage the Providence, the wreck of the atilda on Mururoa in 1792, and ank’s own voyage to Tahiti in 56—a subject which leads him to ss in a few choice morsels about iatrice Grimshaw, Bully Hayes, iul Gauguin, Rupert Brooke, the st LMS missionaries and Robert mis Stevenson.

After flitting, bobbing and mean ring through 194 pages of this rt of thing, you finally find Frank ibarking in Sydney for Auckland Qantas on the first leg of his irney to Pitcairn. The plane, ank says, is powered by “four :ghty Allison turbo-prop engines, lich cruise at four hundred miles hour”.

At last, you think, everything will plain sailing at a fast clip from re on!

Finally, he makes it

But Frank is not even strapped wn in his seat belt before he is ■ving us a 38-line history of Qantas )r those not in the know”.

Having got that off his chest, his ver-broadening girth” does get apped down, a barley sugar is pped into his mouth, and his plane eaks across the Tasman in one litary paragraph.

From NZ he is off to Pitcairn in Shaw Savill liner. This voyage, art from conjuring up brief stories of Shaw Savill and the and of Rapa, plus dissertations on j International Date Line, and the scovery of the Bass Isles, is as aightforward as can be.

Frank finally gets ashore at Pit irn on page 205, and from then til he leaves again on page 239, manages to stick to the subject Pitcairn Island almost without viation —and to be quite interesting out it, despite some occasionally nal prose.—RL.

Journey To Pitcairn. Angus And

bertson. $4.75).