The Thrill of Recognition

When it happened, I could not say.  Some time ago, quite possibly while living in Australia, a friend of mine recommended a novel to me.  My "To Be Read" list is quite long, and many of the books are not always available on Paperbackswap.com or at my local library, so some just stay on the list for quite some time.  Two weeks ago I was going through my list, searching the South Taranaki library catalogue, and not having much luck. It seemed most of the titles were not in their circulation.  But, as providence would have it, "The Thorn Birds" by Colleen McCullough was available at the Stratford library.  The back of the cover describes it as "the dramatic and colourful family saga of outback Australia", so I was a bit surprised when I started the first chapter and it was set in New Zealand.

Shearing sheep in Taranaki - Tawhiti Museum

On page six, while describing the area where they lived, it mentioned a Mount Egmont, which gave me pause.  I thought to myself, "Mt. Taranaki is in Egmont National Park.  I wonder if the European name for it is actually Mt. Egmont?"  Not much else was given, in terms of describing where they lived, until page fourty-one when my suspicions were confirmed while describing young Frank: "A small structure of pure power, at seventeen he had never been defeated in a fight and was already famous throughout the Taranaki peninsula."  You can be sure I was grinning when I read that sentence. A sergeant from Wanganui, the next biggest town south of Hawera, is mentioned as well!  I can't help but chuckle when I think that had I read the book while in Australia I'd have never remembered these town names when I moved here in May.

Tawhiti Museum, Taranaki

The story is split into several sections and the next section is set in outback NSW, in towns I have never heard of, nor visited.  I did visit an outback station on my trip to the Flinder's Ranges, and had been to Alice Springs, so there was a bit of recognition in that sense, but not quite the same thrill as those first parts about Taranaki.  I suppose the biggest difference for me and someone who's never been Down Under is that I didn't have to use as much of my imagination while reading the descriptive landscape sections.  The vast distances, types of birds or gumtrees, even the "kangas" made sense to me.  Reading about the devastating bush fire they experience, with all the current wildfires in the news lately (whether in Greece, Portugal, Australia, Canada, or the U.S.), certainly struck a note.

When Meg & Luke move to Queensland in the next section of the book I again had that little grin when reading about places dear to my heart.  Their vacation to the Atherton Tablelands reminded me of my own lovely memories from a visit to Lake Eacham.  The scent of the molasses from the sugar cane fields and the constant humidity of FNQ that Meg disliked so much required no imagination on my part.  Memory served me far better than imagination ever could.

Overall, I enjoyed the book because it was unpredictable.  Not in an obnoxious way, but in the way that life itself is unpredictable.  Things happen, people make choices and have to live with the far-reaching and sometimes unimaginable consequences, you just never know how things will turn out.  I'm near the end of the book now and this sentence absolutely resonated with me:  "And whether they came home again or not, they would belong neither here nor there, for they would have lived on two continents and sampled two different ways of life."

Fossil Coast B&B