The Cyclone
As is often the case in literature set in Australia, setting takes primal importance in the story. Australia is a unique and peculiar place with its own idiosyncrasies that help to bring a story to life. For instance, cyclones are a staple of the climate situation. And by the way, yes, the winds do spin in the opposite direction of their American counterpart:
“When the wind struck the whole earth shook, but neither of us really appreciated the violence of the cyclone (we found out only much later that it killed and injured quite a number of people) until we saw a T-model Ford, which had been parked beside the kerb without its hand-brake on, moving along the road with nobody inside it, just rolling along quite slowly and steadily, propelled by the violence of the wind and we could see huge branches tearing off the trees and red tiles from the roofs of seaside houses flying against a ragged wet sky that screamed at us.”
Fitzgerald Down Under
Ever stop to wonder if those fancy epochal names which are given to certain periods of time transcend nationality? For instance, when one hears the term Jazz Age, one quite naturally probably thinks American: Flapper girls with their unbuckled shoes being pawed by frat boys in ridiculous full length raccoon fur coats. But were Australians sitting atop flagpoles, swallowing goldfish and doing the Charleston? Imagery suggests yes and no:
“Jack, untroubled by any such inhibitions, spent almost every night prowling the city like a tomcat. And the city was fiercely generating a life of its own that was exactly in key with his wild, gay, rebellious outlook. The Jazz Age had reached its crescendo : the wail and boop of saxophones, the twangling of ukuleles, and the mad jumping of the Charleston had even begun to invade the hitherto inviolate stuffiness of our suburbs. Beyond our neat hedged perimeters, the world suddenly seemed transformed into a jungle of iniquities, of violence, sex, flaunted revolt, alarming uncertainties.”
Mythic Australia
Setting is important, but like any country, Australian exists on two levels: the real and the mythic. What is most surprising, perhaps, is just how remarkably quickly Australia manages to create its mythos. Less than fifty years as an independent nation and the narrator already has much to work with:
“Myths do grow out of the eternal earth, this much is certain : and this Australian myth seems to derive from something primal, an earth-challenge. The continent is cruel and pitiless, four-fifths of it uninhabitable. The vast dry heart of the land is dead, and it is on this intractable central grimness that the teeth of adventure have long since been blunted. Here journeys have ended, the pioneering flame has guttered and failed, hopes and ambitions lie buried beneath the blowing sand.”
War (Not War)
The narrator takes the reader along for a ride though much of the first part of the 20th century as the narrative inexorably makes it way toward the winds of war managing to make it all the way from Germany to Australia as century moved toward its midpoint. The story is not really a war story per se, however; it is stuck in the same sort of war-but-war story that the narrator reflects upon:
“the flags were up, brave and bright in the equinoctial winds, but nothing was happening. We were in a state of war, and there was no war. An urgent patriotism would seem to flare up and then die in embarrassment. Hearts would kick with a queer compulsive excitement at the sight of some staff-car moving from Victoria Barracks with uniforms inside it and polished badges, but there was almost no khaki in the streets, and no posters that appealed for sacrifice, and no bands playing. At the far fringes of the world aeroplanes were dropping bombs inside the walls of old medieval cities, but they were dropping leaflets too”
