WANDERING NOVELIST
FOLLOW MY DUST! a Biography of Arthur Upfield, by Jessica Hawke, in collaboration with Arthur Upfield; William Heinemann, Australian price 22/6. T is pleasant to be able to agree with something on a dust jacket without looking into the book. Having reviewed here some of Arthur Upfield’s detective stories, I am one of those readers who, as the publisHer says, want to know who’ is this creator of that highly original, European-aboriginal Australian sleuth, Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte. Now the curiosity is satisfied in a real-life story even more exciting and -Tomantic than fiction, _. Son of middle-class parents in the English Gosport, Arthur Upfield went
to Australia in his teens, in 1910, and almost immediately settled in the deep country, where he easily accepted people and conditions. By the time he was of age he was salted in saltbush. He pushed a bicycle by hand loaded with gear and pets. and wan-
dered about, working and loafing. He helped to cart wool by mule-waggon to Broken Hill, and passed the first, motorcar to take that route; tended cattle and sheep; patrolled long stretches of rabbit fencing with camels; lazed with a companion in a boat down the Darling; and generally soaked himself in the scenery and life. There were five years with the A.JLF., including Gallipoli. Inland Australia entered into Upfield’s very bones. To him the great cities of Australia are "the jungle," and the distant "bush" the only life for a man. As a boy he had scribbled novels, but he let writing go till a discerning backcountry woman saw what his wandering spirit lacked, and encouraged him to resume. While cook at an out-station, where he had a room of his own, and in a camel-dray on lonely fence patrol, he wrote novels that won him recognition. Jessica Hawke and Upfield give us an impressive collection of inland types of men and women. Upfield took his detective from an educated half-caste tracker who became his friend and christened him "Bonaparte" because he (the tracker) happened to be reading a "Life" of Napoleon. There are good illustrations, but there should be a map
to show Uphelds wanderings, _
A.
M.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 954, 22 November 1957, Page 14
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362WANDERING NOVELIST New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 954, 22 November 1957, Page 14
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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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