Colonial encounters
An 18th-century Australian mystery is brought convincingly and memorably to life.
It’s fitting that, in the acknowledgements for this riveting novel, Jock Serong thanks the great Australian writer Kate Grenville. Although Serong’s Preservation and Grenville’s
The Secret River differ in style, approach and period, they share both a gripping sense of narrative and an unflinching commitment to honestly portraying the bewildering complexity of early encounters between European settlers and indigenous Australians.
Serong has been acclaimed for his crime novels, Quota, The Rules of Backyard Cricket and On the Java Ridge, but this time he takes on historical fiction, based on a true story. In 1797, three exhausted and badly injured shipwreck survivors are picked up by a fishing boat on a beach not far from Sydney. Their vessel, the Sydney Cove, had grounded on Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania). Leaving some survivors there, a group of 17 set off to walk north in search of help and rescue. But after hundreds of nightmarish miles, moving through an incomprehensibly strange landscape and crossing the lands of several Aboriginal nations, only the three men remained: trader William Clark, tea merchant John Figge and a young Indian servant, a lascar as he is known, named Srinivas.
In Sydney, the governor orders Lieutenant Joshua Grayling to find out what has happened. Clark has kept a diary but it soon becomes clear that he and the sinister Figge are offering very different versions of the journey and of the deaths of their 14 companions. Only later, when Grayling’s independent and feisty wife Charlotte discovers that the boy can speak English, is Srinivas asked to tell his story.
The terrible truth gradually emerges, told, in turn, by the first person voices of Clark, Figge and Srinivas, and in thirdperson sections devoted to the Graylings. Serong moves easily between these various speakers, making each personality distinct and credible. (Although it’s not difficult to grasp the changes in viewpoint, a little decorative page device for each character acts as a subtle and attractive reminder.)
Perhaps the book’s most impressive achievement is the remorseless, amoral and magnetic Figge. It can be challenging to delineate evil without producing mere stage villainry, but Serong manages it superbly. Figge, who has stolen the identity of a man he murdered, and cold-bloodedly and delightedly removes anyone threatening his self-interest, is bad to the bone, but impossible to forget. Be warned: no holds are barred in describing the violence he perpetrates, though it’s never gratuitous.
The darkness Figge embodies is fundamental to this raw colonial world, where Europeans cling to the edge of a vast and frightening continent. Apparently without effort, and with no hint of intrusive research, Serong evokes both the period and the landscape: you can feel the heat, hear the birds’ clamour, grasp the unease.
He negotiates the relationship between Europeans and Aborigines without placing an awkward and anachronistic lens over a distant time. The casual racism towards the lascars, the misapprehension of the Aborigines and the unexpected recognition of a shared humanity are approached thoughtfully and convincingly.
Serong blends the known and the imagined unknown into an outstanding and memorable whole. As he says, “Perhaps all of this is history, and none of it.”
Figge, who has stolen the identity of a man he murdered, is bad to the bone.