WHAT TIMARU IS READING

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21090, 16 July 1938, Page 12

WHAT TIMARU IS READING

RURAL LIFE IN AUSTRALIA PEN PICTURE OF AFRICA (Specially written lor "The Timaru Herald' by A. K. Elliot) “Savages in Serge” is the quaint title of J. G. Hides' new book. His previous : book, “Papuan Wonderland.” has been i \ery popular, and this new 7 one seems io follow on the same lines of easy narrative. The book relates the story i of the Papuan Constabulary those I "Savages in Serge ’—many of the best | of whom have served sentences for murder. Should an inland tribe become too keen on their pastime of head-hunting, the "Savages in Serge,” s under a white officer, are sent out to | arrest the natives and bring them I under the influence of a paternal I Government. J. G. Hides commenced this book in the deep forests of the I Rentoul River Country. Scribbled on I the back pages of his field-books and j on odd scraps of notepaper, its strucI ture gradually took shape. Its final chapters he wrote while wandering j about the head-waters of the Strick1 land, and when his book was all I finished and ready for the printer, he remembered with what pleasure the ' writing of them had filled many of his -! idle and lonely hours.

Looking at Australia Australia seems to be an enticing country for the “Rolling Stone,” and in “Hard Liberty." by Fred Blakeley, we have another Odyssey of a rolling stone. So he sits gazing into his tentfire —the snow steadily tailing—feeling very comfortable, and as he gazes into the thick bed of coals, he watches the lives of many friends of long ago. As their faces shape, he gets to wandering over some old track of earlier days; he passes from one track to another as the faces fade and each calls up the next —most of them pleasant; very seldom does a face appear that jars a little. Mr Blakeley opens his reminiscences at the time of the great drought which overtook Australia tqwards the end of the last century'. He ran away from school on two separate occasions and at the age of 13 was working his own claim at the opal-fields. He worked diligently in the mines for some years, until like many another Aus- : tralian he felt the call of the North I and set out with his companions on his trans-continental bicycle ride. Many adventures befell the party, including I a visit from the dreaded Night Tribes lof the Interior. This book is told in ; an entertaining and interesting manner. and. in its way. is a valuable record ■ of pioneering life in Australia. Life in Africa “Out of Africa,” by Karen Blixen, is I a fine book. Karen Blizen had a farm I in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills. The equator runs across these highlands, a hundred miles to the north, and the farm lay at an altitude |of over 6000 feet. “In the daytime you I felt that you had got high up, near to the sun, but the early mornings and evenings were limpid and restful, and I the nights were cold. The geo- | graphical position and the height at the land combined to create a landI scape that had not its like in all thJ | world. There was no fat on it and no luxuriance anywhere; it was Africa distilled up through six thousand feet like the strong and refined essence of | a continent. The colours were dry and burnt, like the colours in pottery.” | On the farm the}’ grew coffee, but. as the land was rather high for coffee, they were never very rich. Coffee growing is also a very long job—the waiting for returns is long and weari- ! some: four or five years till the coffee trees comes into bearing, and, in the meantime, all manner of visitations comes to a coffee plantation—drought, disease, and weeds—but above it all is the pleasure of owning 600 acres of land, with 600 trees to the acre. There is the beauty of a coffee farm—when the plantation flowers in the beginning of the rains, it is a radiant sight, like a cloud of chalk, in the mist and drizzling rain. The coffee-blossom has a delicate slightly bitter scent, like the black-thorn blossom. This book is unusual in that it gives farming in Africa from a different angle. There is not the usual travel book glamour, there is more of reality—hard work, long days, the importance of fine days, of rain for the crops, of the cool winds for drying. One year the long rains I failed, and that was a tremendous | and terrible experience for the f armer who has lived through it—he will never forget it. “With every day, in which we now waited for the rains in vain, i prospects and hopes of the farm grew dim, and disappeared. The ploughing, pruning, and planting of the last months turned out to be a labour of fools. The farm work slowed off, and stood still." Many visitors were entertained on the farm, and a most entertaining chapter is the result.