FIELD TRIP

ALLI SINCLAIR’S IMAGINATION TRAVELS BACK TO NORTH QUEENSLAND’S CANE COUNTRY IN THE WAKE OF WORLD WAR TWO

It’s hardly romantic but the idea for Victorian author Alli Sinclair’s slowburning fourth novel came to her while she was doing the dishes.

“It was the candle of an idea,” Alli says. “I sat down and wrote the outline for two hours and it was like the story was inside of me just waiting to come out.”

Indeed it feels as though Burning Fields could well be the amalgam of many stories of its place and time, north Queensland’s sugar cane country post World War Two.

It was a time of great readjustment, for men returning from the war, for women consigned again to domesticity after wartime freedoms and for the many migrants coming to Australia in search of a new life.

“I’ve always loved stories set after the war,” Alli says. “It was such a time of transition in Australia for so many people and, in some ways, it’s a time that hasn’t been fully explored.”

The fictional town of Piri River is where Rosie Stanton returns to the family cane farm after her years working for the Australian Women’s Army Service in Brisbane. But nothing is quite the same. She has lost two brothers in the war, her parents carry their grief in their own ways and the town is swelled with migrants, both itinerant cane cutters and new families fleeing the devastation of post-war Europe.

The Conti family from Sicily have bought the neighbouring farm and Rosie is drawn to the troubled Tomas who is struggling to leave his wartime past behind him.

Alli’s novel tells two stories: that of Rosie trying to find her place in a home where much has changed and the story of Tomas’s involvement with partisans trying to undermine Mussolini’s brown shirts in Sicily.

Both strands of the novel are rich in research — Alli’s “favourite bit” of the writing process.

“I did lots of research, I always do, because it’s just so interesting,” she says. “My friend’s parents are Sicilian and they told me a lot of what they remembered from that period.

“They spoke to their family still living in Sicily and there were some great stories about what life was like at that time.”

Alli says the Italian Immigration Museum in Melbourne was another “wealth of information” and Canegrowers Australia helped put her in touch with farmers from that period.

“People are always so happy to talk to you,” she says. “It’s advice I give to new writers — don’t be afraid to contact someone to find something out.

“People love talking about something they’re passionate about.”

Alli started out telling the story of Rosie but soon realised Tomas’s story added different layers to the narrative.

“I felt like I knew Rosie straight away,” Alli says. “She has such strength and cares about so many people but Tomas took longer to get to know, a couple of drafts.

“I’ve had two timelines in all my novels so I’ve had a bit of experience with telling two stories. It’s almost an instinct I have now to know when to end a chapter and change points of view.”

Certainly the settings for both stories are evocatively painted, as are the cast of authentic characters who pepper both storylines. Ultimately Burning Fields isa story of Australia as much as it is an historical romance.

“I wanted to show a different side of the war that wasn’t so much talked about,” Alli says. “There’s a huge market for Australian stories and if we don’t tell them, they’ll disappear. I think publishers are starting to realise that more too.”

Indeed Alli’s earlier novels have been translated into German and Serbian and Burning Fields is destined for those markets as well.

“I did a book tour in Germany and there’s something in the way Australians tell stories that strikes a chord with Germans,” Alli says.

“There’s a big appetite for Australian novels there.”

Although Alli spent her 20s as a tour guide and mountain climber living in Argentina, Peru and Canada, her next novel will be set back in Piri River.

“I just didn’t want to leave it,” she says. “This one though will be set in 1994 and we’ll see how things have changed.

“There won’t be any of the same characters but there will be little references here and there.

“There’s something about cane fields I just find fascinating.”

“THERE’S A HUGE MARKET FOR AUSTRALIAN STORIES AND IF WE DON’T TELL THEM, THEY’LL DISAPPEAR.