When I grew older, I read books by Nan Chauncy and Kylie Tennant. One of Tennant’s I remember in particular was All The Proud Tribesmen, about a boy who has to flee his South Pacific island when a volcano erupts; probably the first book I read with a non-Caucasian hero. I imagined him as a boy I knew, but with a tan. There was the rampaging Seven Little Australians, by Ethel Turner, with the great Judy death scene (see my Little Women chapter). There was a horribly boring book about the outback which I never finished, We of the Never Never by Mrs Aeneas Gunn (the writer David Malouf says it was given to him as a child as a typical Australian book, and it put him off Australian books for the next twenty years). There was also Australian Legendary Tales, collected by K. Langloh Parker, with illustrations I now recognise as similar to dot paintings, by Elizabeth Durack. I could not imagine the people in these stories as like anyone I knew, even with very deep tans. I was curious about this exotic land of Australia, home of my ancestors, with its fantastic fauna and flora, outlandish natives I could not picture, and limitless desert. I often looked at a map showing the country as huge, red and pitiless. In the middle of the desert were two tiny towns, Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie. What would it be like, to live in all that red?
“I was curious about this exotic land of Australia, home of my ancestors, with its fantastic fauna and flora, outlandish natives I could not picture, and limitless desert.”
I finally came to Australia at the age of twenty-eight, first on holiday and then to live in Melbourne, a decentsized city on a bay, with skyscrapers and trams, where the surrounding landscape was greenish-blu-ish-grey and often brown at the end of summer, but never red. The bush was alien, yet it gave me a strong sense of deja vu. Amazingly the eucalyptus trees dangled vertical leaves, just like the ones in Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, and the trunks sometimes had scribbles on them like the gumnut babies’ writing, and there were the gumnut hats! And when I saw my first banksia tree, I understood exactly where those monsters had come from. Koalas were cute, as in Blinky Bill, but they could also be grunting and aggressive and frightening, as in Snugglepot and Cuddlepie. I found out that Truganini was a real historic person, but she was not the last of the Tasmanian Aborigines: that was a myth, or colonial wish-ful thinking. I also found out that Elizabeth Durack had been criticised for pretending some of her paintings were done by a fictional Aboriginal artist, Eddie Burrup. So even my picture books turned out to be a cultural minefield.
“Koalas were cute, as in Blinky Bill, but they could also be grunting and aggressive and frightening, as in Snugglepot and Cuddlepie.”
My Australian friends tell me their experience was the other way round from mine: they grew up reading about landscapes and animals in England. One friend who flew to London as a young woman described the plane going over little green fields and thatched cottages, so familiar from many a Blyton adventure, and her nostalgic feeling she had come home. She then went to stay in a squat in Brixton.
“My Australian friends tell me their experience was the other way round from mine: they grew up reading about landscapes and animals in England.”
Of all the Australian books I read as a child, the one that stays most with me is The Magic Pudding. That might be because I read it to my son when he was young, but even that choice shows how much I prized it. The story was about the owners of a pudding, a character in himself, who magically renewed himself whenever he had slices cut from him. He’s entered the Australian language, albeit cynically: we’re often told that politicians are offering the voters a magic pudding of never-ending goodies. He had different flavours: you could choose from steak and kidney, plum duff or apple dumpling. Here was the magic of the title. But hang on – was it scary? Not in the least. Did that matter? Not in the least. Oh well. There goes another hypothesis.
Here were the familiar features of children’s books I was getting to expect – a seamless mix of humans and talking animals, lots of pictures (stunning pictures), lots of humour, an adventure, villains, verse and song – but there was something else I loved. What was it?
It was rough, that was it. As my dad might have said, the book had a hide. And swagger. The characters talked in an amazing slang, full of unfamiliar words, dropping their ‘g’s – the Pudding was always a Puddin’ – and even though I knew they weren’t swearing or blaspheming, it sounded as if they were. They didn’t eat, they guzzled. They were never nice or polite. They stood up for what they believed in or wanted, and they weren’t afraid to pull whiskers or pummel with their fists, even with the police or the law. Albert the Pudding was the rudest of all. I felt as if just reading the book made me a bit wicked, and I loved that feeling.
“As my dad might have said, the book had a hide. And swagger. The characters talked in an amazing slang, full of unfamiliar words”
I have vivid memories of lying in bed as a child while, night after night, my father read The Magic Pudding to me. I loved pugilistic Bill Barnacle and his friend Sam Sawnoff, the penguin bold. I loved the gentlemanly Bunyip Bluegum, but most of all I loved The Puddin’ itself. Albert, the cut-and-come again Magic Pudding, was rude, angry, gloomy, resentful, disobedient, violent and self-pitying – yet, at the same time, enormously powerful. All the forbidden things that as a small girl I longed to be.
The story of the three happy wanderers and their pudding – their adventure always under threat from the notorious Wombat and Possum, Puddin’ Thieves – was rollicking and rambunctious. Norman Lindsay’s black-and-white illustrations were full of the same wild energy as his story, and I was enthralled.
Charlotte Wood
One thing puzzled me, though. There was a koala hero, Bunyip Bluegum, who wasn’t at all like the rest of them. He wore spiffy clothes, the early twentieth-century equivalent of smart casual (bow tie, dark jacket and waistcoat, loud check pants). He tipped his boater to passers-by and spoke in proper polite English, never the amazing slang. I recognised him at once: he was posh. He met the Pudding and his owners, ex-sailors Bill Barnacle and Sam Sawnoff the penguin, who wore tatty old pants hitched up almost to their armpits. I recognised them at once: they were rough. And I knew rough people were dangerous.
Where did this come from? My parents, always people with the best intentions, had sent me mixed messages about class. They were Australian, yet they spoke proper English, with the occasional vowel that gave them away. My socialist dad told us we were classless, but even at a young age I could see we were doing all right. We had nannies and cleaners and for a while we had a chef. We rented our home in St John’s Wood, a large Victorian semi-detached house with an artist’s studio. It was in a dubious state of repair – on rainy days, we had to set out buckets to catch the leaking water as it cascaded from the roof through several floors to the basement, like the acid blood in Alien – but down the road were smaller terraced houses with no front yards where the kids ran wild in the street. My mother warned me against playing with such ‘rough’ children, and I was too frightened to disobey. It was all right to play with the children down the other end of the street in the larger houses, like my friend Polly, whose parents were both distinguished doctors, or the retail magnate’s daughter, who bullied me so mercilessly I never wanted to go back there again. (These days, even the smallest houses in that street are done up a treat and are worth millions of pounds; nobody plays outside.)
So I got the message that being posh was both wrong and risky. But being rough wasn’t right either. At primary school, I took care to cultivate an accent that was a bit cockney, a bit Home Counties whine. It seemed to go down all right. I didn’t make friends, but I didn’t make enemies either. So I felt for poor Bunyip in the lion’s den, and I was annoyed with him for not realising what danger he was in. I waited for Bill and Sam to take the mickey, to crush Bunyip with their jibes, maybe even to threaten him with a fist-pummeling, and to send him packing. No such thing. They were all instant friends and equals, gentlemen of the road. It was a miracle, albeit a puzzling one, and I loved The Magic Pudding for it.
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nbsp; My re-reading copy is a 1969 hardback edition from the now defunct Australian publishers Angus & Robertson, who first published the book in 1918. I can’t remember how I got it; either someone sent it from Australia to London, or more likely I bought it second-hand after I arrived in Australia a decade later. It’s a rather unpleasant pinky colour, faded to yellow on the spine, but it’s in good nick. This is the book I used to read to my son Christy, when he was small. He says now he enjoyed it, but he can’t remember much about it.
The first thing I want to do is look at the pictures. They are just glorious, cartoonish and exaggerated figures with too-large heads, yet instantly recognisable types, whether human or animal. There are dozens of them, often full-page, and they tell the whole story, or at least they remind me of the details. It’s all in the way the characters carry themselves. Norman Lindsay’s three heroes have such a confident way of walking – heads up and back, grinning faces, chests and stomachs out – as if they own the road. Only the Pudding, dragged between them on his knock-kneed spindly legs, frowns like a sulky child forced to go for a stroll. Other characters cringe, slouch, scurry. Here were some of my first acquaintances with Australian fauna: a koala, a hedgehog (in reality an echidna), a flying fox, a kookaburra, a bandicoot, a wombat and a possum. For years, Lindsay’s drawings convinced me that possums were ugly pink hairless creatures, nothing like the delightful furry pests now foraging nightly in my Melbourne backyard. There’s a lot of furious declaiming and finger-pointing, and occasional pinching and fisticuffs. Every picture swirls with action. I can’t wait to get back into this Australia.
“The first thing I want to do is look at the pictures. They are just glorious, cartoonish and exaggerated figures with too-large heads, yet instantly recognisable”
Lindsay begins by inviting us to look at pictures: front, side and back views of Bunyip Bluegum–‘you can see what a fine, round, splendid fellow (he) is’–and his uncle Wattleberry. Bunyip Bluegum leaves home because his uncle’s whiskers are so annoying, always getting in the soup. He can’t make up his mind whether to be a traveller or a swagman. His friend, the poet Egbert Rumpus Bumpus, makes up his mind for him: all he needs is a walking stick, and he will become ‘a Gentleman of Leisure’.
“For years, Lindsay’s drawings convinced me that possums were ugly pink hairless creatures”
And very gentlemanly he is, just as I have remembered. Uncle Wattleberry and Egbert are also gentlemen koalas (Wattleberry wears a top hat and Egbert has a monocle). Bunyip Bluegum is kept busy raising his hat and conversing with people on the road, ‘for he was a very well-bred young fellow, polite in his manners, graceful in his attitudes, and able to converse on a great variety of subjects, having read all the best Australian poets.’
When I first read this, I had never heard of a single Australian poet, and even now I’m not sure if this was some sly in-joke from Lindsay, having a go at his poet friends. But we get the picture. It is not until Bunyip Bluegum comes across Bill and Sam that he meets the proles, busy tucking into the Pudding. Bunyip has forgotten to bring anything to eat with him and he’s starving, but far too well-mannered to ask for food. It’s Albert the Pudding who offers himself up, and when Bunyip comments on his politeness, Albert snarls back:
Politeness be sugared, politeness be hanged,
Politeness be jumbled and tumbled and banged.
This, I remember now, is the moment of surprise and joy when I realised that politeness, gentility and all the rest of it are going to get walloped. It’s still a pleasure, even though this time I knew it was coming.
This is also the point in the story where as a child I was puzzled by the instant rapport, by the fact that Bill and Sam didn’t lay into this pompous upper-class chap and send him packing. Now I’m puzzled for the opposite reason: that Bill and Sam don’t cringe and touch the forelock. Here is the Aussie egalitarianism I’ve heard so much about, but don’t always observe, and Lindsay’s own version of a socialist paradise: in the democracy of the open road, all men are equal, though not all men are the same. The toff and the prole can enjoy each other’s company and benefit from each other’s strengths.
“Here is the Aussie egalitarianism I’ve heard so much about, but don’t always observe, and Lindsay’s own version of a socialist paradise: in the democracy of the open road, all men are equal, though not all men are the same.”
The story is short and simple. The Pudding owners (Bill, Sam and Bunyip) stroll the country, but the Pudding thieves (the Possum and the Wombat) constantly plague them, using all sorts of tricks and wiles to steal the Pudding, and sometimes succeeding. The adventures culminate in a farcical court scene reminiscent of the trial in Alice in Wonderland, but rougher and ruder. Finally the Pudding owners decide the story will stop wandering along if they stop wandering along, so they retire to a treetop house out of the thieves’ reach, and live happily ever after.
Reading the story now, it occurs to me that the vagabond life before they settle down might not be so much fun as it seems. The three Pudding owners are of course well provided with food (if lacking in the fruit and vegetable department) and have a billy can and tea and sugar and biscuits, but not much else. No tent, no groundsheet, no sleeping bags. What happens if it rains, or if it’s too hot, or too cold? What about dust and mud and insects? Don’t they need money sometimes? Do they ever get a bath? Won’t Bunyip’s smart clothes be ruined in no time? Suppose they meet adversaries more dangerous than the Pudding thieves? None of this mattered in the slightest when I read the story the first time. I was a child who had never been camping, innocent of all possible discomforts and hazards, and the romance of the road in my mind was undimmed. Nor was this the terrifying red Australian desert: just a benign countryside of fields and market gardens and the odd town, ‘dozing, snoozing, sausage-shaped places where all the people who aren’t asleep are only half awake, and where dogs pass away their lives on the footpaths, and you fall over cows when taking your evening stroll.’
“Nothing seemed finer to me, I remember, than sitting around the glowing camp fire with your friends, partaking of the Pudding and singing a rousing song or two.”
Nothing seemed finer to me, I remember, than sitting around the glowing camp fire with your friends, partaking of the Pudding and singing a rousing song or two. And what staunch friends they are, instantly generous and trusting towards each other, despite class and species differences, sworn to uphold the principles of the Noble Society of Pudding Owners, which they have just invented. Ratty and Moley could do no better. And to stop things getting too cosy, there’s always Albert’s unfailing grouchiness.
As a child my favourite books were Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series, Captain W. E. Johns’ Biggles books, and Mary Grant Bruce’s Billabong books. What has remained with me from the Five is that feeling children have when they are independent and free of parental supervision and can have adventures, the essential ingredients of which are friendship and loyalty (and hard-boiled eggs, lashings of butter and ginger beer). Bring all this together and you can overcome all adversity and explore any secret passageway (and there were many!).
With Biggles, I thrilled vicariously at the adventures of a fighter pilot and his companions, while Billabong station was more about an adventure-filled place rather than its characters. No wonder that my first book, The Fireflies of Autumn, was about a close-knit village of people who always eat together, and together face the upheavals (adventures) of the twentieth century.
Moreno Giovannoni
There’s not much suspense in this story, because even the slowest child can see the tricks coming. The fun is of another kind. Oh, the rudeness! It’s muttered, growled, roared. The language of the insults! Bungfoodlin, to Jeredelum, a punch in the gizzard, of all the swivel-eyed, up-jumped, cross-grained, sons of a cock-eyed tinker… If punching parrots on the beak wasn’t too painful for pleasure, I’d land you a sockdolager on the muzzle that ud lay you out till Christmas…. You’re a poltroon, you’re a slaverin’, quav
erin’, melon-carrying nincompoop…bun-headed old beetle crusher… leather-headed old barrel organ… if yer don’t take yer dial outer the road I’ll bloomin’ well take an’ bounce a gibber off yer crust… and so on.
The weirdest thing is I remember it all. I must have pored over the sentences for ages, marvelling at the sounds in my head, wondering what a sockdolager or a gibber was. I even remember puzzling over the word ‘ud’ until I worked out it was the slang for ‘would’. The only line that shocks me now is ‘You unmitigated Jew’ (more recent editions of the book leave this line out) but I was shocked and delighted by all the invective when I first read it. This was a time, believe it or not, when I didn’t even know any swear words, let alone four-letter words. The rudest word I knew was probably ‘bottom’. So here was the thrill of the forbidden, sanctified in a classic book for children. More than any other book, The Magic Pudding seduced me into language. And when decades later I heard the Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating let rip in parliament, I knew where that language came from.
“ here was the thrill of the forbidden, sanctified in a classic book for children. More than any other book, The Magic Pudding seduced me into language.”
The heroes aren’t just rude, they’re violent. Bill and Sam regard it as their duty to fight the Pudding thieves at every opportunity, and when they are not uneasily parlaying, they are laying fists and flippers on snouts, and on one occasion knocking the Possum into a fire. We are expected to enjoy this, and as a child I revelled in it, though it doesn’t please me so much now. The Possum and the Wombat are cowards who never fight back and always run away, but not before they are given a trouncing. In the court-room scene, our heroes attack authority: the Pudding pinches the Mayor’s leg and Bill slaps the Mayor in the face (with some provocation – the foolish Mayor and his craven constable are handling the case very badly) and the Judge, who is supposed to restore order, lays into everyone he can reach with a port bottle.
Storytime Page 17
