ADDITIONS TO LIBRARY

Taranaki Daily News, 16 November 1935, Page 21 (Supplement)

ADDITIONS TO LIBRARY

A PADRE IN “NEVER NEVER” LAND. ROMANCE OF EMPIRE BUILDING. The chief Librarian of the New Plymouth Public Library reports the following books in popular demand:— General Literature. “A Pilgrim’s Way in New Zealand,” Alan Mulgan. “Triple Challenge: War, Whirligigs and Windmills,” Hugh Wansey Bayly. “Broncho Charlie: The Autobiography of Broncho Charlie Miller,” Gladys Shaw Erskine. “Ventures and Vision,” George Garro

Jones. “Brighton,” Osbert Sitwell and Margaret Barton. “The Heart of England,” Ivor Brown. Fiction. “Volcano,” Cecil Roberts. “Regency Buck,” Georgette Heyer. “Days Dividing,” Neil Bell. “Richard Savage,” Gwyn Jones. “Strange Man’s Home,” Lesley Storm. “Of Time and the River,” Thomas Wolfe. The following volumes have been added’ to the library recently:— “The Boundary Rider,” by R. B. Plowman. (Angus and Robertson, Sydney). / A publisher’s note describes “The Boundary Rider” as the completion of a trilogy Mr. Plowman has written of his “parish” of 100,000 square miles in what is one of the loneliest portions of Australia’s “Never Never” country. The area in which he ministered lies at the north and north-west of the State of South Australia, stretches over the border of Southern Queensland, and comprises country in which the cattleman, the mirier and even a peripathctic parson must take risks of death from thirst or heat as part of everyday happenings.

A parson must be something more than an ecclesiastic if he is to make good amongst the inhabitants of those vast spaces. Mr. Plowman once achieved a reputation and a welcome on the strength of being able to repair sewing machines, but even he was noplussed when his skill was expected to cover repairs to an organ that had suffered from camel transport and other illusage!

In his huge parish there were only four church buildings, belonging to three different denominations, and these in widely scattered townships. So services had to be held in other places wherever people were to be found and whenever they could be fitted in. The padre had to get used to much social unconventionality also. At one station he was introduced to the housekeeper as “cook” and her husband as “Bill.” When he asked their surnames, he was told the couple claimed mail addressed to Baxter, Bates and Evans! The parson found that men who became drunken nuisances about a town could be heroes in Never Never land. He tells of one who was described as a “drunken brute” when he left a township. A few days later he heard of the “brute”? carrying his own and a mate’s swag for a hundred miles. His mate was blind with sandy blight, arid at the end of their. long tramp to the railway for medical treatment ' they missed the. train by a few hours. There was no other train for a fortnight, so the “brute” took his mate and his double burden and set off for another 80-mile tramp in the blistering heat in order that his mate could reach a doctor. Here is a less pleasant picture of Central Australia—the “Afghan town” of one of the small settlements, where the camel-drivers and their families resided. “A queer collection of humans inhabited that miserable quarter. Among the huts was a number of nondescript dogs and baby camels; but they were not such a mixed lot t as the humans. Several “Afghans” (Mohammedans of various races—Baluchis, Afghans and North-West Frontier Indians) squatted on the ground. Two or three native Indian women peeped shyly from doorways. Half-caste and black lubras, wives of the Afghan teamsters, stood watching. Mixedbreed children of various hues played about or squabbled; and at one doorway stood a white woman and her white daughters. The woman, widow of a white man, had married an Afghan camel-driver; and at that very time was arranging the marriage of her 16-year-old daughter to another Afghan. ‘Selling her,’ the white residents declared, as a substantial cash payment had to be made to the mother as part of the transaction.” But while the problem of the mixedbreed child is one with which the Commonwealth has yet to grapple, the padre found most of the people of the Never Never country were “white” in more senses than colour. Cheery and full of courage, always hospitable, willing to help a stranger, but rmsparing in ridiculing pretence, they were worth working for and worth holding as friends. “The Great Divide,” ; by Alan Sullivan (Lovat Dickson arid Thompson. London). Mr. Sullivan has told in the form of a novel the thrilling story of the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway. New Zealand had a personal link with that great undertaking, for it was Sir James Hector, who was afterwards chief of geological work in New Zealand, and for many years Director of the Dominion Museum at Wellington, who was one of the surveyors who found “Kicking Horse Pass” through which the railway was takep over the mountain range that had seemed almost impossible to conquer.

There was romance in high places and in low while the railway was building. The reader is taken behind the scenes among the politicians and financiers. The great men of Canadian history are shown in their hours of anxiety as well as of triumph, and there were dramatic days when it seemed almost certain that the venture would fail.

A humbler romance, also associated with the railway, was that of “Big John” Hickey, at first one of the labourers in the terrible Fraser River section of railway construction, and later a contractor and trusted servant. It was Mary Moody, nurse at the “Yale” hospital, who first aroused in Big John the desire to do something better with his life, and her efforts were supported by Molly Kelly, manageress of a brothel in the township that had been established at the railhead.

It was no steady progress for Big John. He had his setbacks, but his friendship with Mary, even when she was thousands of miles away, was sufficient to help him upwards, and by and by there came the pride in the work itself. Mr. Sullivan has many characters in his story. Gamblers and surveyors, wives who made homes in the wilderness and other women who wrecked them, drunken orgies and fine

heroism, all these and much besides went to the great accomplishment. The political romance is fascinating for those who have read anything of Canadian history. Those who have not will find the lives of the humbler characters in this book full if interest. They will concede that endurance, whether as. financier, politician or platelayer, was the chief characteristic demanded of those who built the great Canadian railway. “Crucible,” by J. P. McKinney. (Angus and Robertson, Sydney). This is a story written by an Australian Digger of war experiences. The actual happening? 1 iff er little from those of similar war stories. But Mr. McKinney has analysed with much sympathy the reactions of a young Australian to the effect of the war upon character. John Fairbairn had resolved not to let war sever links with his life before enlistment. The resolve gives his self esteem a good many jolts. He is engaged to' an Australian girl, but has a French mistress who bears him a son. He is given a “cushy” job to assist an old Indian officer who suffers from a weakness for alcohol, and John wonders if it is not cowardice to retain such a job while his cobbers are in the trenches.

A gruesome incident was the arrest of a deserter. The officer examining the poor wretch tried to save him. But the man was done. “I was glad to be took” he told the Major, “they can do what they like with me.” Fairbairn knew what that would be: “They’d prop him up against a wall with 12 good men and true in front of him, and 12 good rifles and true. It wouldn’t take long. He’d just crumple up and flop down. Part of the game . . . because he hadn’t played , according to the rules—because he’d let himself be born in a slum, and reared and starved in a slum, and jostled and kicked about the streets until he was jostled and kicked into the trenches.” “Crucible” can be recommended to any who think that war is perhaps the inevitable blood-letting which keeps nations in good health. Mr. McKinney shows that it can take more than blood even from those rot called upon to give their lives or the battlefield. He has written a worth-while war story. Ugly in its facts, bv. with the ring of truth all the way through.