Great Book: My Secret River

The Secret River by Kate Grenville (2006) (334pp)

This is a fabulous book. It’s about a convict, Will Thornhill, sent from the slums of London to Sydney in its earliest days. It recreates his experience in trying to get a small farm going on the banks of the Hawkesbury. The difficulties and challenges he faces trying to achieve his dream are formidable and Grenville enables us to identify with them. By far Grenville’s greatest achievement is to capture the interaction between the enthusiastic and determined interloper, Thornhill, and the local inhabitants and users of the land, the Aborigines. Even though the author reminds us that this is a work of fiction, her research and the resonance with facts we already know of black/white history make this story a sobering read. I was left with a sense of admiration for the tenacity with which many early settlers tried to carve a living from the wilderness. Yet this was tempered by reflection on the cost to the indigenous population of the suffering imposed by white men with their guns and disease and righteousness.
By coincidence I am now reading Aboriginal Victorians by my good mate Richard Broome and he brings a scholarly treatment to the sweep of white settlers through Victoria in the 19th century. It is inevitable that I have Grenville’s Thornhill in the back stalls of my mind as I read Richard’s rich and often depressing historical account. I’ll write more about his history when I finish it.