Australian Essays

Oxford Book of.

(Some excerpts). 

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Came across this essay - 'The Prodigal Son' by Patrick White where he talks about returning to Australia and residing in Castle Hill, and then eventually writing The Tree of Man. Some words from him:

So, amongst the rewards, there is the refreshed landscape, which even in its shabbier, remembered versions has always made a background to my life....Possibly all art flowers more readily in silence. Certainly the state of simplicity and humility is the only desirable one for artist or for man. While to reach it may be impossible, to attempt to do so is imperative. Stripped of almost everything that I had considered desirable or necessary, I began to try. Writing, which had meant the practice of an art by a polished mind in civilised surroundings, became a struggle to create completely fresh forms out of the rocks and sticks of words. I began to see things for the first time. Even the boredom and frustration presented avenues for endless exploration; even the ugliness, the bags and iron of Australian life, acquired a meaning.  As for the cat's cradle of human intercourse, this was necessarily simplified, often bungled, sometimes touching. Its very tentativeness can be a reward. There is always the possibility that the book lent, the record played, may lead to communication between human beings. There is the possibility that one may be helping to people a barely inhabited country with a race possessed of understanding.

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The book itself has essays from 1800s to modern times. I am browsing through it, reading what catches my fancy. Like an interesting 1889 essay on 'The Australian Bush-woman'  by Louisa Lawson.  She roughly sorts 'her colonial sisters' in three heaps -  city women, country women and bush-women. And goes on to say about the bush woman - 'She is independent, taciturn, and the regularities and measured methods of town life appal her.' Hardy, hard-working, strong, used to the difficult life of drought ridden bush, the essay then details the life of a bush woman which is very different from the lives of city or country women. An interesting fact she points out is the number of women and girls in Australia in 1887, which is 471,000. Today the country's population is 27 million people, a country mostly populated by colonial immigrants and then other immigrants over time. 

Later she says, 'Time and our efforts may help to mend the world.' - which I find to be very hopeful mantra to carry around with me in my day.

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