Book Reviews

From Fiji to Suburbia via Kimberley

A learned tome for Pacific scholars, A Bibliography of Fiji, Tonga and Rotuma (418 pages), by Philip A. Snow, recently pub lished by the Australian National University Press, is the result of 31 years’ research in libraries and archives throughout the world.

It consists of some 10,000 entries in distinct categories, each giving full bibliographical details, and it covers a period from the 17th century to the mid-1960’5. It sells for $10.50.

Philip Snow, brother of C. P.

Snow and now Bursar of Rugby School, was a member of the Fiji Administration from 1938 to 1952, after graduating with honours from Cambridge. Throughout his service career he made a practice of record ing everything discoverable about the Islands.

The bibliography was originally intended for his own use, but he was persuaded of its value to scholars and he has, finally, had it published.

Snow’s first draft was lost during one of the Rewa floods and a second was burnt when a lantern caught fire in Fiji.

The present volume has been pro duced as a “working edition” because of its importance to Pacific historians.

In a foreword, H. E. Maude asks for corrections for a second edition which he hopes will become a standard bibliography on Fiji, Tonga and Rotuma.

Subjects covered include every thing from administration, amphi biology, art and music to commerce, fiction, games and dances.

(A Bibliography Op Fiji, Tonga

AND ROTUMA. Australian National Uni versity Press. $10.50.) KIMBERLEY, in north-west Aus tralia, is a harsh land where temperatures range from freezing to 127 degrees and where each year it rains for four months and bakes for eight. Naturally enough the Aborigines who live in Kimberley lead a hard life and this life is re flected in their strikingly gaunt, and singularly beautiful, rock paintings.

The paintings are not to everyone’s taste, of course. Of those that have

not been worn by time, some have been used for target practice and are bullet-chipped (good shot!), and some have been scrawled with obscenities.

A few—a very few—are lovingly cared for by old Aborigines, and some of the old-timers still paint the rocks in the manner of their fore bears. But as civilisation is trucked into Kimberley, the old Aborigine is becoming extinct. Must his paintings —paintings that record centuries of tradition—also become extinct? Un less something is done pretty soon to preserve them, they must.

An excellently-illustrated book (colour and black-and-white). The Art of the Wandjina, by I. M. Craw ford (Curator of Anthropology and Archaeology at the Western Aus tralian Museum), examines the rock paintings of Kimberley and reflects, pessimistically, on their future.

The Wandjinas of the title, in cidentally, are the best known of the Kimberley rock paintings—owl-like gollywogs of gods who are said to control the winds and the rain.

Though most of the rock paintings in Kimberley are Aboriginal in inspiration, there are indications that some of them were inspired by early European visitors to Australia.

It is likely, for instance, that the Kaiara gods (like the Wandjinas, gods of weather) were painted after the Aborigines of West Kimberley had seen their first Europeans— probably sailors sometime in the 19th century.

But what can be done to preserve these rock paintings— to keep them from the effects of weathering and from the sharpshooters and the graffiti merchants?

Not an awful lot. They could be preserved from rain by concrete awnings— not a pretty thought. It is also possible, says Mr. Crawford, that some sort of chemical might preserve

the paintings from the effects of erosion, but then again the same chemicals might damage the paintings.

In his summing up Mr. Crawford writes: “Until the processes leading to deterioration in the paintings can be halted, the only positive action we can take is to record the paintings photographically and to try and store the photographs under conditions where they will not fade or change colour”.—Sß. (THE ART OP THE WAND JIN A.

Oxford University Press. $6.00.) BRUCE Petty’s politics make me wince, but his cartoons make me laugh.

Fortunately, in The Best of Petty, the cartoonist doesn’t grind many political asses. For Petty is not really a political animal but a social com mentator.

He is also a humanist, and, like most humanists, he has a pretty dim view of humanity. In Petty’s eyes, man is sick or, at best, sad. This is not an unreasonable view of man kind, but how are Petty and his friends going to build that People’s Palace on earth out of the sick and the sad?

Enough of that stuff, though. Let’s laugh with Petty. The Best of Petty is a collection of his cartoons (all of them undated—a bad slip) from the Daily Mirror (Sydney) and The Australian.

The collection will please anyone from any political wing, be he a middle-of-the-road fascist or cop beating pacifist, provided he has a sense of the absurd. It might not be quite so pleasing to people who “like a good joke”.

An example of Petty’s social comment (I wish there were another expression—“fun” perhaps?); Suburban family sitting round telly.

Variety show on telly. Ducks flying across the wall. Mother knitting.

Husband in anguish, “Oh life where is thy sting?”

Another: A group of Aborigines camped in the desert. In the back ground, a rocket. One of the Aborigines, to the rest, “Now why didn’t we think of something like that?”

Petty, with his clean line and his good-natured stoicism, is one of the world’s best cartoonists. His work has appeared in Punch, New Yorker, and Esquire —and you don’t get pub lished in those magazines unless you are top notch (well not often, any way). The Best of Petty is the best of Petty. Nothing more to say.—Sß. (THE BEST OF PETTY. Horwitz Pub lications. $1.00.)