Book Reviews

Short Stories About

The South Pacific

Fact is stranger than fiction is a cliche thrown up by every book cover blurb that offers a story based on a real happening.

That fact can be stranger than fiction is a known truth, but it’s the manner of telling that makes it palatable.

Journalist and author, Keith Willey, in a collection of five short stories, has taken a number of events that happened, more or less happened or might have happened, and with author’s license created a book which not only makes fruitful reading but adds the true grit of personal ex perience.

Don’t be fooled by the title, Naked Island. It is the title of the major story in the book and offers no lurid reading. Keith Willey covered the story of the amazing exile of six shipwrecked Tongans on the deserted island of (they were later told) ’Ata, as a news story. He later realised its possibilities as a short story and by visiting the island and re-enacting the 13 month exile with the boys, found the material for this book.

Shipwrecks and castaways are as old as Robinson Crusoe but Willey has taken the subject in depth and written it as though he was one of those Tongans who used their wits and their traditions to overcome danger.

Willey also provides an insight into just why Tongans have become the best Islanders of the Pacific at stowing away. He writes: “The principal was tolerant and easy going. But even so, his discipline proved onerous for the six boys— descendants of a people who once were the most daring warriors and voyagers in the South Pacific; and among whom the confines of a tiny island group have proved so restrict ing that it is said the favourite sport of Tongan youth is to stow away on boats bound for New Zealand or Australia”.

The rest of the short stories have :he added interest of being largely about the South Pacific. Nym and t he Crocodile is based on a story told to Willey by Aborigines when

he was a professional crocodile shooter in the Northern Territory.

The Diary of Ginger Palmer re counts the life and loves of a “latter day pirate”. Ginger, whom Willey actually met, was one of those Aus tralians you can’t help admiring and liking, even though he was a thorn in the side of the authorities and probably did a great deal more harm than good in his occasional forays into the South Pacific. Ginger stole a boat and piloted it single handed to Dutch New Guinea. There he led a life of easy-going debauchery until his final capture.

Damper tells of a Northern Ter ritory cattledog that, having lost its master, survived for 10 months in the cruel out-back. Here Willey, much in the style of Jack London, has

taken a yarn, filled in the gaps and created a minor epic about the com plex business of living in the animal world.

The last story, The Massacre on the “Young Dick”, tells of a bloody battle between Queensland recruiting men and Malaita men of the Solo mons who tried to take their ship and kill the crew.

In short, this book makes plain good reading. It also has the ad vantage, from the South Pacific point of view, of being one of the few books that is about life in the Islands, written by an extremely gifted author.

—J.E.

(NAKED ISLAND, Hodder and Stough ton, $3).

The six Tongans after rescue from 'Ata.

With them is the crew of the "Just David", which picked them up.