A Book Featuring a Journey

My life would have been very different had my parents or I made different decisions.  They met and married in Australia but decided to return to Scotland, arriving just before I was born.  But Australia was never far from their minds and I grew up with a picture of it as an idyllic place.  And this image was strengthened as I read the novels of Nevil Shute, one of my Dad’s favourite authors. Australia was very significant for Dad and so was his short stint in the RAF and his subsequent career as an aircraft electrician. So Nevil Shute ticked many boxes for him. 

Shute was a cracking storyteller and a genius at bringing his settings to life, particularly those in Australia.  My favourite of his novels is The Far Country. My copy is a second printing, published in 1952 by Heinemann. The novel is ostensibly the story of Jennifer Morton, a minor civil servant, living in London, and Carl Zlinter, a Czech doctor turned New Australian, working in up-country Victoria.  Each of them, in different circumstances and for different reasons travels to Australia just after the Second World War. The two meet in difficult circumstances and are falling in love when Jenny is forced to return to England.

That’s the basic plot, but really the book is a love story about Shute’s new home. It is clearly his voice coming through the pages as various characters discuss the fact that England (it’s always England, never Britain) is finished; that no-one is happy; that there are shortages of everything; that being successful only means being taxed more; that winning the war has cost too much of everything; that starting anew somewhere like Australia means having opportunities. One doesn’t need to know that he emigrated to rural Victoria just before writing this book to discern where his heart lies. Nor does it come as any great surprise that Jenny and Carl, when finally given the chance to be together, choose Australia.  I almost did too. 

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