BEYOND THE PAYEMENTS
WEALTH IN THE WILDERNESS, by Arthur Groom; Angus and Robertson Ltd., Australian price 21/-. BELOW SCAFELL, by Dudley Hoys; Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press, English price 12/6. HE link between these two books is the fact that the purpose of both is to lead us away from cities to the wild. If I had read the first 50 years ago it would probably have taken me to Australia. I don’t think the second would have taken me to Cumberland. Yet it is a much better book technically than the first, which is just enthusiastic but sincere propaganda. To put it another way, Mr. Groom had a story to tell, Mr. Hoys a book to write. Mr. Groom bought a half-ton utility truck and drove it all the way from Brisbane to Wyndham (via Alice Springs), and all the way back to Brisbane again (this time via the Barkly Tableland). It was a journey of great difficulty and continuous excitement, and the excitement in the telling is contagious. Mr. Hoys begins in a Cumberland dale and ends there, making his journeys on foot, and never getting far from home; which in itself, of course, does not matter, Thoreau’s boat journey down the Merrimac was no longer, and his wanderings round Walden. Pond shorter still. But he tied up every night to a star. Mr. Hoys sees the stars and talks about them, but in the manner of Little Jack Horner. It would be offensive to say that he is not interested in his dales and fells, or in the colourful characters who share them with him; but if is difficult not to feel that his interest (continued or next page)
is largely literary. They are paragraphs, pages, or chapters for a book and in due course appear there. Mr. Groom is just an honest reporter; almost a _ to-Hell-with-culture reporter. Though he is not making his first acquaintance with Australia’s never-nevers, he looks at everything with a glad surmise and somehow conveys the glow to his reader. For Cumberland’s cold you get heat; for mud, dust; for sheep-dogs, dingoes; for miles, hundreds of miles; and for a civilisation crabbed with age a society whose culture is Adamitic. It gave me almost a shock, so completely had I surrendered to his zest and warmth, to discover when I got to the end of his story that he died without
seeing it in circulation.
O.
D.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 34, Issue 870, 6 April 1956, Page 12
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405BEYOND THE PAYEMENTS New Zealand Listener, Volume 34, Issue 870, 6 April 1956, Page 12
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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