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reviews

Review: Lillian Armfield by Leigh Straw

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Leigh Straw, who has previously written about infamous Razor Gang crime boss Kate Leigh, has picked up the threads of the first female detective, Lillian Armfield, who played a significant role in policing the 1920s ‘Razor Wars’ between Leigh and Tilly Devine, in Lillian Armfield.

There was a lot more to Lillian Armfield’s trailblazing policing work than those infamous and bloody battles in Sydney, and Straw has set to unfolding Armfield’s life in the police from the earliest days, when she and Maude Rhodes were recruited in 1915 as the only two members of the Women’s Police.

Straw has pulled together a comprehensive view of Lillian Armfield’s professional life, and a some of her closely guarded private life, by working from a variety of sources – including contemporaneous newspaper reports, articles from the Police Gazette and other periodicals, published histories of the events (including Rugged Angel, Vince Kelly’s 1961 biography of Armfield based on interviews with her and witnesses of the events and times) and interviews with surviving family and Sydney locals.

After a glimpse of her work helping to apprehend cocaine dealer “Botany May” Smith in 1928, Straw backtracks to examine Armfield’s family history, with its First Fleet convict connections and Hawkesbury River settlers through to Lillian’s early life in Mittagong.

What follows is a detailed study of Lillian Armfield’s life and work, first in an asylum and then as a police woman who worked for 35 years, until her retirement in 1949. The quality of her dedication, compassion, toughness and skill becomes clear very early on, particularly as it served as a beacon to others. She was even respected (if not actually liked) by her arch-enemy, Kate Leigh.

Straw takes the time, throughout the book and particularly at the end, to look at Lillian Armfield’s legacy; the way she argued for more women to join the force, for their work to be taken more seriously, and the success of the Women’s Police which led to police services around Australia eventually recruiting women to active roles in detection and policing.

I particularly liked both the Epilogue, highlighting some of the women who have followed “In Her Shoes”, and the Afterword, which looks at an unsolved mystery in the public understanding of Armfield’s private life which may suggest a key in understanding the attitude she took with her into working with women, children and communities on the often mean and sometimes bloody streets of Sydney in the first half of the 20th century.

Lillian Armfield is an excellent study of how one determined and gifted woman changed the shape of Australia’s early policing and women’s roles within it.

research, writing

My Library: Such is Life by Joseph Furphy

In my research about Victorian-era society in the UK and Australia, I sometimes pick up 19th century fiction. Such Is Life – an Australian classic, I’m told – is set in the 1880s, was written in 1897 and not published till 1903. The title comes from what were reputedly Ned Kelly’s last words before he was hanged in 1880, and the phrase pops up periodically as an ironic literary shrug about the whims of fate.

Such is Life is a series of anecdotes about the people government worker Tom Collins meets in his travels in rural Australia. That makes it sound straightforward, which is certainly isn’t, as the novel is punctuated with long and rambling side stories. A tale may start with a campfire story, diverge onto discussions of other, slightly related stories, philosophical tracts and adept interpretations of Shakespeare, before finally meandering back to the original point. The style makes it challenging to read but provides a lot of its charm too. 

The narrator, Tom Collins (his name itself a 19th century term for a tall story) spends time with bullock drivers, boundary riders, itinerant workers, graziers and the like. There’s lots of swearing but it’s all signified by terms like “What the (sheol)” (hell) and phrases like “good (ensanguined) shot!” and “poor (fellow)”. I no doubt substituted even fruitier language than he intended while reading, and the use of the substituted terms could be coy but is often very funny in its context.

Some stories are full of humour – like the one where Tom loses all his clothes in the river and his skulking about naked, trying to resolve the issue without scandalising anyone. (The repercussions of this misadventure are discovered some chapters later.) Others are full of the sad, grim reality of bush life with the campfire stories of children lost in the wilderness, some discovered too late or not at all. 

(Frederick McCubbin produced several paintings about this deep anxiety for white settlers in this country.) 

But there’s more to Such is Life than a relatively realistic though rambunctious look at rural life in Australia at the time.

In my 19th century research, I’m looking for hints and examples of queer life, representation and perception, since contemporaneous accounts keep queerness hidden or coded when it’s not being excoriated. So colour me pleasantly surprised when I discovered that Such is Life is open to queer interpretation in no uncertain terms.

In the first chapter, two men with the bullock teams are noted as disappearing in the night for an unknown reason – Dixon and a fellow called Bummer (the colloquial term for a loafer or layabout).  Nothing is explicit, but you can’t convince me that 19th century readers weren’t fully alive to a filthy pun when they read it.

More frequent is a playful and curious sense of gender switching that permeates the story. Tom’s horse Cleopatra is actually a stallion; in the naked escapade, he’s hiding at a farm and hears someone call for ‘Jim’ who turns out to be a young woman named Jemima. Clearest of all is the long sequence where Tom is talking to the disfigured misanthrope, Nosey Alf, and it’s clear to the reader (if not to Tom) that Alf is a woman. Because of previous chapters we can discern who Alf Jones really is and perhaps interpret their reasons for living in men’s clothes, but Tom’s obliviousness means we’ll never fully learn Nosey Alf’s own reasons (or what pronouns are most appropriate).

Such is Life can be hard work to read because of all these lengthy off-piste passages, as well as some pretty convoluted writing. The book is full of difficult to follow dialogue written phonemically, reflecting the multicultural nature of the life. I’d feel the dialect of the Chinese boundary rider’s English was a lot more racist if it weren’t for the fact that Furphy gives exactly the same treatment to the Dutch, Irish, Scottish and even posh English characters throughout. 

A book of its time, Such is Life has the expected baseline sexism and racism – yet there’s an egalitarian streak that runs through it, noting at one point: “Better no religion at all – if such lack be possible – than one which concedes equal rights beyond the grave, and denies them here”. In between rough bush talk and rougher bush lives, Tom frequently philosophises on deep questions, including the nature of free will (referencing Hamlet and Macbeth) and notions of love.

For anyone wanting social insight into 19th century rural Australia and to explore some attitudes to queerness, Such is Life is worth a look. It might be best to read it in small bites however, to better digest the strange divergences, dense colloquialisms and long literary discourses

Telling a furphy

As a curious aside, Australian vernacular has a term – a furphy – to refer to a rumour or a false story. You’d think it derived from Joseph’s book but in fact the etymology experts note that it comes from the water carts belonging to Joseph’s brother John: people would gather round John’s water carts for ablutions and gossip, and thus the term gained use. 


Further reading

novels, reviews

Review: Highway Bodies by Alison Evans

It’s always fabulous to have new zombie fiction set in Australia, and it’s ten times as grand when the zombie fiction in question has as much personality, drama and heart as Alison Evans’ new YA book, Highway Bodies.

The story is divided into three-chapter sections: the first from the point of view of a teen near the epicentre of the zombie outbreak; the second from a  group of young musicians taking a week away in the country to work on songs; the third a pair of non-identical twins whose mother is a nurse at a hospital where the outbreak is getting out of hand.

These young people are diverse and queer. As their stories are told and eventually converge, we learn that the world has always been hostile for them – the twins, for example, bear scars inflicted by a violent father. In trying to survive, each group is aware that other survivors are just as – or even more – dangerous to them than the mindless zombies.

Evans has a deft hand in giving each of the three main narrators their own distinctive voice. A lot of what happens is gruesome as each is confronted with the zombie infestation, mitigated by the humanity of the characters’ responses and fears for the lives of their loved ones.

The story leads to a conclusion that isn’t a safe geographical point so much as a fierce dedication to supporting each other in a world where everything is hostile. It’s a bit like actual life in that way.

For all the gore and violence, Highway Bodies manages to be simultaneously uplifting in the love and protectiveness its protagonists feel for each other. Love for family (both born and made) and friendships are the motivating forces for each of them, and there’s tenderness, loyalty and love at the heart of the end of the world.

As zombie fiction it’s fast-paced and full of the types of zombie encounters we love to read about. As an allegory for growing up queer in an environment that’s hostile to your very existence, it has power beyond the surface story.

Highway Bodies is thematically reminiscent of Mary Borsellino’s fantastic work in Ruby Coral Cornelian, The Devil’s Mixtape, Thrive and others – diverse kids in a hostile world, whose best weapon and best hope is love.

Evans’ second book is a corker, and I can’t wait to read whatever they write next.

Buy Highway Bodies (RRP $19.99)

novels, reviews, writers

Review: All Our Secrets by Jennifer Lane

Clan Destine Press’s new release, All Our Secrets, is set in the fictional small town of Coongahoola in NSW.

Set in 1984, the town is steeped in the consequences of a wild party on the banks of the Bagooli River in 1975 and the rush of children born nine months later. The fathers of the River Children are not necessarily the men married to their mothers.

Nine years later, one of the River Children goes missing, his body turning up a few days later by the river. He is the first of a string of murders. One of the children who may be the next target is Elijah Barrett.

His 11 year old sister, Gracie, is our guide to Coongahoola. Through her eyes we meet her chaotic family, her town, the shock of the murders and her beloved brother.

Lane imbues Gracie with a realism that makes the young girl sympathetic and irritating in turns, though her innate kindness is her saving grace (as it were) even when she’s not always making the kindest decisions in her attempts to fit in to the town’s narrow social expectations. She is struggling with the estrangement of her parents, her sometimes embarrassingly religious grandmother, her crush on the boy next door and her anxiety from the usual array of schoolground bullying and snooty cliques.

Through this thoroughly believable child, Lane captures the personalities and quirks of the people of Coongahoola. As each child disappears, only to be found murdered, the net of suspicion is cast wide – from townspeople to the group of religious devotees who have recently set up camp by the river.  The parallels between the personal chaos of Gracie’s world and that of the whole town is clear: all the rivalries and jealousies, the in and out groups, the unfounded rumours and blame games.

All Our Secrets is a gripping and perfectly paced story, balanced splendidly between Gracie’s  distress and concern for her family ad the fear experienced by the wider community as their children become victims.

It’s no surprise to learn that All Our Secrets won the 2018 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best First Novel in New Zealand. Clan Destine Press has brought this fantastic book, with it’s unusual and powerful point of view, to a new audience. Get it now to read a fresh new voice in Australian crime.

Buy All Our Secrets