In many ways, Kendall's life reads like a 19th century version of a soap opera with one unedifying crisis after another... Like many in colonial Australia, Kendall did have reason to fudge his family history, and it's fascinating to read just how many versions of it there were. The two main culprits were his mother whose imaginative reconstructions were second only to Mrs Hamilton-Grey (so-called), who published not one but three romantic biographies of his life, the last in in 1929. (She also left a bequest to build a memorial to him in the Sydney Botanic Gardens.) However, in 1938, the year after she died, Kendall's son, Frederick published his own Henry Kendall, His Later Years, which he said was a refutation of her book Kendall Our God-made Chief.

She was not the only one wanting to possess his memory...supporting the romanticised idea of the poet: there are all kinds of memorialisations in NSW where you can even visit the so-called Henry Kendall Cottage in West Gosford — which was not actually his cottage at all. It belonged to the Fagan family who (according to the website):

...made a significant contribution to the local area through their farming, citrus orchard, mail contracts, timber business, and breeding of cattle and champion race horses. They were one of the first to grow oranges in the Gosford area. Between 1873-1875 the Fagan family cared for and provided employment for the Australian poet Henry Kendall.

Indeed they did. But generous as they were, it would probably surprise them to find their pioneer cottage renamed as it has been!

The Fagans took Henry in and restored him to health after he was released from an asylum, where he had been committed in 1873, filthy, starving and having led the life of a Bohemian and to have plunged deeper and deeper into debauchery. Estranged from his long-suffering wife and children, he was supposed to have taken up work as an editor in Grafton, but got drunk at Newcastle en route and the steamer sailed on without him. With no money or possessions he set off back to Sydney on foot.

As it happens, long steady walking through the great swathes of trees was one of the best things Kendall could have done, for that is now known to settle nerves, and quieten disturbed thoughts. On the other hand, his feet would have been sore, his boots rather the worse for wear, and given the long distances with few villages or settlements, he was bound to have been hungry as well as tired. Thirsty too. In that part of the country he would have encountered timber cutters' camps from time to time, and those of shingle splitters; doubtless he was invited to share their campfire when he came across them, that is, if he could overcome his instinctive shyness. (p.152)

But even the story of how Kendall the tramp came to meet with the Fagans isn't clear. Nor is it clear how they recognised Australia's leading poet down on his luck, when newspapers didn't feature photographs at that time. However it came about, there is something Biblical about their kindness. Mitchell alludes to Matthew 25:35:

However it happened, he arrived at the head of Brisbane Water and the Fagans gathered him up and took him home. He was enhungered, and they gave him meat; he was thirsty, and they more than likely gave him tea. He was a stranger, and they took him in. (p.153)

It was not to last. Nothing good seemed to last for Kendall.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2020/10/07/where-shadows-have-fallen-the-descent-of-hen...… (mer)

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anzlitlovers | Oct 7, 2020 |

Peat Island : dreaming and desecration av Adrian Mitchell

Peat Island is less than 250 pages long, but it took me a while to read it because its subject matter is distressing. It’s the sad and sorry story of one of Australia’s institutions for the mentally ill, and how as a society we have failed to care for the vulnerable in ways that show respect for their humanity. My reading of the book coincides with the Victorian Premier’s announcement that it will hold a Royal Commission into mental health if his government is re-elected.
Premier Daniel Andrews made the pledge because he recognised that mental illness is an issue for everyone. He is quoted as saying that it hit home when both of his children had returned from school with letters about the death of a student. In the ABC report (viewed 4/11/18)—while he didn’t allude to the recent Royal Commissions into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and the one revealing disgraceful banking scandals—it’s clear that his intention is that a commission into mental illness would achieve the same powerful result and bring mental health out of the darkness and into the “blinding light”.

He said the inquiry would change lives and save lives. “We don’t have the best mental health system we can possibly have,” he said. “Only when a person is in real crisis do they get tailored individual help. We have a system that simply can’t cope and will continue to contribute to tragedy if we don’t have a royal commission and seek those answers, make that reform, drive that change and show that leadership,” he said.

Retired Adelaide historian Adrian Mitchell makes it clear in Peat Island that he doesn’t have much time for official reports that result in weasel words that mask cuts in funding, that badge inmates as ‘clients’ or that result in pointless changes of name for government departments. But he notes that there were moments in the history of Peat Island where legislative change led to improvements. From its beginnings in the early 20th century as a lunacy asylum, it was not until 1978 that the NSW parliament passed a Mental Health Act, which at long, long last, differentiated between mental illness and intellectual disability.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/11/04/peat-island-by-adrian-mitchell-bookreview/… (mer)

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anzlitlovers | Nov 4, 2018 |

The beachcomber's wife av Adrian Mitchell

… you can’t escape to paradise. The old story is right: paradise is what you lose. It is not where you get to, it is what you might have had. (p.143)

So says the unnamed narrator of this intriguing new book from one of my favourite authors, Adrian Mitchell. And she should know, because she and her irascible husband lived alone for decades on Dunk Island at the turn of the twentieth century while he wrote his Confessions of a Beachcomber (1908).

Well, not quite. I have misled you. I blame the author because he has done such a convincing job of creating the unheard voice of Edmund James Banfield’s wife, Bertha Golding.

The real Edmund Banfield did exist, he was originally a newspaperman and you can read about him at Wikipedia. And he did decamp to Dunk Island after he was diagnosed with TB and a nervous breakdown. He leased the then ‘uninhabited’ island for 30 years, had a plantation there and made a living by writing newspaper columns. Of course Dunk Island was not uninhabited, it was the home of the Bandjin and Djiru people, and indeed the WP entry for Dunk Island tells me that Banfield’s writing described the customs and legends of the people who lived there. The curious thing, as Adrian Mitchell discovered, is that Banfield in his writings said almost nothing about his wife and sole companion on the island.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/01/10/the-beachcombers-wife-by-adrian-mitchell/… (mer)

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anzlitlovers | Jan 9, 2017 |

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