Down Under Coming Up
People for Australia. By A. Lodewyckx. (F. W. Cheshire, 30s.)
AUSTRALIANS say migration, suppressing the prefixes e- or im-, and no wonder : the Common- wealth is used to bleedings of population, as well as to blood-transfusions from our stock. Each year' the planes and ships carrying young Britons to the Southern Cross pass, in mid-Indian Ocean, those that bear young Australians back to the North Star. There are now 60,000 Australian residents in England, plus 40,000 transient visitors each summer.
Among the migrants to the Old Country have been many of Australia's finest artists : forced, by the limitations of artistic opportunity at home, to conquer a second, wider world. The English citadels of opera and ballet, of the concert hall and painting, and, outstandingly, of the popular arts of journalism and Variety, have already been assailed and won; the stage, too, by Australian actors—and now, in the person of Mr. Ray Lawler, by a dramatist of compelling power.
TIME: Early December. It is five o'clock on a warm Sunday afternoon. A table is heavily set for the big meal of the week, Sunday tea.
From the first stage direction of Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, we are plunged into the authentic Antipodean atmosphere : of heat, of vigour, of violence, of emotional frustration, of the blighted Australian myth and dream of the individualist hero in the glorious outback, the man of will and muscle confronting the whole continent . . . now a fallen hero because, as well as his youthful strength, the national dream that the country is still young is fading too.
Roo's tragic situation is Australia's : the pain- ful awakening to adult responsibility. The war, aircraft, tracked vehicles and rocket-ranges, have opened up the vast interior, and violated its mystery for ever. Outside, the umbilical cord to Europe has been cut : Australians are alone, a handful of white millions in a huge, encircling Asian sea. Farewell the happy days when 'home' was England, the dear imperial Mum, Asians the
real colonials, and Prime Minister Billy I-Ingi 1/°ic could tease poor Woodrow Wilson in the Gale des Glaces. Now, Australians have to think clnic . think hard, and for themselves. The Australian Commonwealth, by Brian f ili; patrick, is an adtuirable instance of such thihkini It surveys Australia in the last half-century vil'i, wit, penetration, meticulous scholarship and at engaging radical bias. National habits °t described: the booze, so dearly loved, so hard,o' get, the gambling, illegal and practised ever!, where, the fanatical sport-cult, and the e° cracking accent. We hear of the miserable 'abos,' not ev, ' citizens, the shreds of their continent filched 1 the rocket-range. Of the 'New Australians,' n_A°' one in nine: the same proportion as that of 13Ifil dwellers to the urban population. Of I"; cherished dogma the 'White Australia' polieY, which, however shocking to the liberal-minde; means that Aussies are the only tropical Enrly peans in the world who've done their own d'i manual work.
Before the Hitler war Australia had no dip matic corps to speak of : now, suave but purPos, ful, Aussie diplomats abound. Reflections ', Australian Foreign Policy, by the late F. Eggleston, formerly ambassador at Chung contains solid reflections on these affairs. Pe°P for Australia, by Professor A. Lodewyckx, lei, equally solid study of Australia's top probv! population—a well-meaning book, inclined ' idealised 'solutions' . . . what would Roo slii'' one wonders, to its critique of 'White Australis
One word, 1 think. ! 'flir'
These books point to a growth of self-exa011,4 Lion, self-awareness : and hence, soon, one 01; expect, to a greater thoughtfulness and eloquen1,1 `With the reputed exceptions of the OjibbeIci and Iroquois,' says Mr. Fitzpatrick, 'there maY,001 no community less given to conversation.' I ,..il true! That is precisely one of Mr. Lagile'd difficulties—his heroes are so tongue-tied, a°,,„ introspect so ponderously, that to make their do; emotions manifest, the dramatist sometimes 11; to fall back on the eloquent asides of his c'%) stage directions. But if Roo, one day, is givellol,, gift of poetic speech to match his depth of fe,, ing, what splendid Australian heroes we shall lie°
upon the stage!
COLIN MACIN,- ■
I
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