AN AUSTRALIAN RESERVE

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32524, 6 February 1971, Page 10

AN AUSTRALIAN RESERVE

Dryandra. By Vincent Serventy. 201 pp. Colour photographs. A. H. end A. IV. Reed. The photographs give this book its immediate appeal. Nerves frayed by the day’s contact with contemporary fellow man are balmed by these Channing pictures of Australian birds and creatures of the 50,000-acre Dryandra Forest 100 miles from Perth. The tiny dormouse possum, scarcely extending itself over the width of a man’s three fingers; a bandicoot on a late-aftemoon food hunt the curiously striped numbat a smart-alecky kookaburra having a small snake for lunch. There are about 90 such colour photographs. The text will appeal most to hobbynaturalists seeking specialist information, but one could read many other books and gain less useful knowledge than that from the body of the queen termite can spring 60 million individuals, and that in deserts the insects have been known to dig 120 feet to the water-table and bring the needed moisture up to the surface. Both sides of the argument are aired in the case “kangaroo v. man." At an estimate, 200,000 a year were killed by the Aboriginals in pre-European Australia. With the disappearance of the native huntsman and the dingo and the increase in watering points, the kangaroos have increased steadily in suitable areas. They are now a “probSHORT STORIES The Girl Who Sang With The Beatles and Other Stories. By Robert Hemenway. Macdonald. 209 pp. Several of the stories in this volume have been previously published in “The New Yorker” on whose staff the author works. The title story also won first prize in the O’Henry Awards of 1970. It and some of the others in this collection are of novelle length and all of them allow the author ample time to establish and develop his theme. The actual range of subject Mr Hemenway deals with is quite wide — the adjustment of a young boy to the loss of his mother, the gradual relaxation of a young girl who becomes a pianist in a jazz band, the peculiar development of a marriage of opposites. With this wide variety of subject one would expect the stories to be very different yet in fact an air of melancholy hangs that over all of them imparts a sameness; this despite the fact that in some, most especially “Cape Trip” the author appears to be aiming at conveying a sense of pleasure and delight. So it is that some of the stories are far from successful because theme and mood work against each other, while others in which subject and mood are united are very* successful and very pleasing. The title story is certainly one of these, as also is the first in the book entitled "Stories.” This is an uneven collection but one which can be read with pleasure because of an ease of style, a swiftness of characterisation and an astringent humour.

letn.” Another estimate gives at least half a million shot nowadays for pet food each year. On one property 12,500 euros were poisoned in one drive. Serventy puts the question, what is the future of the kangaroo? He quotes research and practical evidence that overstocking by sheep and the attacks of rabbits have been the prime cause of deterioration of pastures, not the grazing of kangaroos. Biologists, he reports, are seriously considering whether it might not be better to let the more efficient producer of meat—the kangaroo—roam the range instead of sheep. Should synthetics win out over wool, the kangaroo will have a very good case. This book has limited interest but those who like it will like it very much because it is written in a non-didactic style that disseminates acceptably the message of the urgent need for the preservation of Nature’s wildernesses before man’s “folly, greed and ignorance” destroys them forever.