Big, New, Updated Australia

Round And Round The

It’s not true, after all, that the best travel books are written after the briefest acquaintance with the place. It seems it’s possible to know a country well—even to have been born in it—and write a highly readable account of it for both visitors and locals.

Colin Simpson’s The New Aus tralia does it in 600 pages including a generous ration of colour pictures, and his just reward will come with the sales he’ll get.

Simpson, of course, has been at the travel writing business for a long time. He’s a real pro who has taken us to Spain, Russia, Greece and large lumps of Europe; to Katmandu, to Japan and Asia’s bright balconies; and to other assorted destinations such as Greenland and the Mela nesian isles. And he’s made the trips worthwhile because of his reporter’s eye for the facts and a writer’s abil ity to clothe them.

It was probably time he came home to look at the new Australia— the one that has been developing these last 10 years since the mineral boom. It’s good news that despite his closeness to his subject, he hasn’t lost his sense of the significant and his ability to entertain en route, surely the two vital requisites of any worthwhile travel writer.

The New Australia underlines, in case we had forgotten it, that Simp son is a very skilful writer, as much at ease with a light-hearted passage as with a serious one. And he pro gresses through the whole range of human reaction to environment in this guided tour of every Australian state, telling us what to see and where to stay when we get there.

Simpson describing the Queensland city of Surfers Paradise: “The brassy blonde that is Surfers piles up a high hair-do of signs, advertising every thing from sun-cream to restaurants.

What has begun to happen here has happened, long since and large scale, from Kings Cross in Sydney to Times Square and Piccadilly Circus, and Tokyo’s Ginza and Paris’ Place Pigalle. Vulgarity, when its voltage becomes sufficient, generates vitality.

Commercialism, with its clutter of signboards and coloured neons at night, creates visual animation which excites the uncritical eye. A sort of sub-culture is created, in which music is something that comes from a carousel, the advertiser and the shop

keeper provide the art gallery, and the lurid paperback takes the place of literature—and not only for the holiday-making hedonist. This city of 60,000 permanent residents didn’t even have a public library. (In a civilised country such as Denmark, the council would be required by law to provide one).”

Simpson in the Tasmanian capital of Hobart: “There is a new smell in the Hobart air. The city’s distinctive aroma has been a blend of hops be coming beer at the Cascade Brewery and raspberries boiling into conserve at the Jones jam factory. Hobartians returning from the mainland or other places overseas are said to prefer this balmy fragrance of their home place to Chanel No. 5. The new smell is of money, tourist money— and not just the accommodation dol lars or the dollars spent in antique shops at Battery Point. . . . The nose twitchings are in anticipation of the Big Dollar, the heady scent of millions . . .”

Simpson, after completing his

35,000 mile tour of Australia: “What is distinctive about the Australian scene is that so much of what is eye worthy is Nature-made, not Man made. ... It must be an odd ex perience for a European or a Japan ese tourist to travel a country where nothing, absolutely nothing, was built by Man until less than 200 years ago.

Although Man had been here for thousands of years he made virtually no mark on the country except some incising of rocks and paintings in caves.”

NANCY Phelan in Some Came Early, Some Came Late, dis covers a different New Australia to Colin Simpson’s, although both are Dinkum Aussies.

Hers is the Australia transplanted from a score of different countries, Estonia, Poland, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Germany, Yugoslavia, and the rest of the countries from which this old sub-continent is drawing its new strength.

Simpson writes of places and things, Nancy Phelan of people, the New Australians who have migrated from non-English speaking countries.

Nancy Phelan has been wandering around the rest of the world for years but like Simpson she is able to bring a new approach to the job of reporting on her own country.

She writes almost as one seeing places for the first time. Often she probably was. The places she visits are the old places made new by New Australians—the Barossa Valley, the rural areas round Adelaide, Thirl mere near Sydney and other areas where so-called foreign cultures have taken root.

But the New Australians don’t fill the whole of the 219 pages. She un covers a new Cornwall created by some who came early, and an old England around Cobbitty, and makes a coach tour from Sydney into Queensland and, in that way, strays a little into Colin Simpson country.

But Some Came Early, Some Came Late is really a necklace of cameos,

pen portraits of people. There are the Tscharkes at Nuriootpa; old Pastor Reuther; Mr. Streuver, who plans to open a bottle museum; Mrs. Steike and Mrs. Kurtz; Johnny da Costa and Francesco, who revealed where all the old mangles go—New Australians buy them for crushing grapes; Mr. Trenwith, obviously Cornish; and Mr. Urm, president of the Estonian Relief Committee.

“Bloody Dagoes stick together— not meex.” That comment from Giulio, whose memories of his Northern Italian home have dimmed after 47 years as an Australian.

He’s now a meexer. Many are not, but Australia is learning to become a community of peoples of different cultures, all with something of value to contribute, and that’s what Nancy Phelan’s Australia is all about.

R. M. YOUNGER’S Australia is different again. His Australia and the Australians is not a travel book. It is sub-titled, “A new and concise history”, although with nearly 900 large pages of small print and a weight of 3i lb, concise is not precisely the word.

Ron Younger is also an Australian, like Simpson for many years a jour nalist, but most of his later years have been spent in America as an official and effective publicist for Australia.

He has displayed equal competence in compiling this detailed record of Australia from discovery to the present. The result, clearly the work of many devoted years of reading and research, is not, intended for the bedside table, or for your airline bag.

It’s a work of reference, to be con sulted according to need.

It would in fact be daunting if not for the author’s well-planned in troductions to each section, designed to be a resume of each stage of Aus tralia’s development. These sum maries, plus the detailed index, allow the reader to get a fairly quick ap praisal of the whole picture or a detailed look at any particular aspect

of development.-

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(THE NEW AUSTRALIA, Angus and Robertson, $7.95, SOME CAME EARLY, SOME CAME LATE, Macmillan, $4.50.

Australia And The Australians,

Rigby Ltd., $10.95). • The Commonwealth Archives Office in Melbourne is to hold all the records of the British Phosphate Commission. The records, which in clude those taken over from the Pacific Phosphate Company, BPC’s predecessor, mirror much of the South Pacific’s history over the last 75 years.