Review: Spirits Of The Ghan by Judy Nunn

Spirits Of The Ghan
Judy Nunn
Random House AUS
2015, 359p
Copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley

Blurb {courtesy of the publisher/Gooreads.com}:

It is 2001 and as the world charges into the new Millennium, a century-old dream is about to be realised in the Red Centre of Australia: the completion of the mighty Ghan railway, a long-lived vision to create the ‘backbone of the continent’, a line that will finally link Adelaide with the Top End.

But construction of the final leg between Alice Springs and Darwin will not be without its complications, for much of the desert it will cross is Aboriginal land.

Hired as a negotiator, Jessica Manning must walk a delicate line to reassure the Elders their sacred sites will be protected. Will her innate understanding of the spiritual landscape, rooted in her own Arunta heritage, win their trust? It’s not easy to keep the peace when Matthew Witherton and his survey team are quite literally blasting a rail corridor through the timeless land of the Never-Never.

When the paths of Jessica and Matthew finally cross, their respective cultures collide to reveal a mystery that demands attention. As they struggle against time to solve the puzzle, an ancient wrong is awakened and calls hauntingly across the vastness of the outback . . .

About four years ago I attended an author event with Judy Nunn at my local library. She’s a passionate and engaging speaker and I bought four of her books that day and acquired another 4 not long after. When I read that her latest book was going to be about the Ghan railway which finally connected Adelaide and Darwin by rail in 2004 I knew that I had to read it. I would love to travel on the Ghan – it takes 54 hours to go from Adelaide to Darwin and I can only imagine how different most of scenery when travelling through the middle must be to everything I’ve ever experienced. Like the east to west train the Indian-Pacific, travel on the Ghan is pretty pricey – enough to put it out of my price range. The cheapest option Adelaide – Darwin is about $2000 and considering I can fly to Darwin for probably less than $200 on a good day, the Ghan is clearly not about getting from A to B. It’s about the experience so onto the bucket list it goes, for hopefully one day when I can do it properly.

The extension of the railway from Alice Springs in the middle of Australia to Darwin in the north would’ve been a delicate operation probably not faced by the construction of the Adelaide to Alice section due to the negotiations that took place with Aboriginal elders. The tracks crossed through land given back to the indigenous people and there had to be numerous discussions about places of spiritual importance. The role of Jessica in the book is such a negotiator, a liason between the local people and the engineers and surveyor teams.

I found Jessica a fascinating character – a half Aboriginal, half Irish girl raised in Sydney’s inner west in the late 70s and 80s but also taught her mother’s mother tongue of Arunta. Described by her father as an ‘exotic mix’ Jess lost her mother at a young age but her father continued to foster her appreciation and connection to her heritage, taking her to find her mother’s relatives when she finished school. She’d already made the decision to study her culture at university and becoming more connected to it was just confirmation that she was doing the right thing. I really enjoyed learning a little bit about some of the culture of the local indigenous groups, such as the way in which courtesies were observed during meetings as well as some of the things they found important and sacred.

Woven in is the tale of an event that happened in the late 1800’s and the way in which it comes to impact on the modern day story was really interesting. At first I wasn’t sure if it was going to be my sort of thing, because I tend towards practicality rather than spirituality but the way in which it unfolded just became so intriguing that I ended up getting right into it. I appreciated the different elements that Nunn incorporated into this part of the story, such as the Afghan cameleers who are such a big part of the history of central Australia.

Spirits of the Ghan is written with sensitivity and respect to Aboriginal beliefs and culture. The setting is vividly described  – despite having never visited the centre I found it easy to picture the construction of the Ghan as well as what some of the sacred sites described might look like. I liked Jess and Matt’s interactions, although it does take a while for their parts of the book to come together.

Now I really need to get to the rest of my Judy Nunn books, which are still sitting patiently on my TBR shelf. It’s so hard to find time to read old books when new ones keep showing up! But with every book of hers I read, I realise how well she can construct a story and I definitely need to get to the others. Going to make it a reading resolution for 2016 to read a couple from her backlist!

8/10

Book #169 of 2015

Spirits of the Ghan  is book #67 of the Australian Women Writers Challenge 2015

 

Maralinga – Judy Nunn

Maralinga
Judy Nunn
Arrow (Random House AU)
2011 (originally 2009), 569p
Read from my TBR shelves

It is 1954 and Elizabeth Hoffman, a smart woman in her early 20s is looking to break into the cutthroat and men-only world of feature reporting and investigative journalism. She’s been given a job by a paper who doesn’t care if she’s male or female and she is using it to get a better foothold before submitting her resume to the large London papers. While covering a military event in Aldershot, the ‘home of the British Army’ she meets Lieutenant Daniel Gardiner.

For Gardiner, it is love at first sight and despite the fact that he’s two years younger than Elizabeth he knows that she is the woman he wants to marry and spend the rest of his life with. Elizabeth is slower to come to the party, focused on her career and not willing to be one of those women that marries and goes off and has babies and never goes back to work. She resists her feelings for Daniel, working on getting the job in London she so desperately desires. Feelings don’t go away though and after some time, the two of them come to an understanding.

Then they get word that Daniel is to be posted to the desert in South Australia on a promise of a rapid promotion. No one really knows much about what the posting is for, although there are rumours – the British military are going to undertake nuclear testing. It’s the height of the Cold War and although allies, Britain and the United States are still in their own race to develop and test nuclear weapons. And what better place to test something dangerous than in the middle of no where. Gardiner meets bushman Petraeus Mitchell at Maralinga, the liason for the Aboriginal communities. Mitchell, fond of a drink, is a tough bugger but the atrocities he has seen spill out of him one night, leaving young Daniel horrified. The local nomadic Aboriginal community, who move through the area to a waterhole that is the backbone of their land, were supposed to be rounded up and removed from the area. But it seems as though they didn’t manage to find all of them.

When Elizabeth receives devastating news in London, it arouses her journalistic instinct. She’s sure she’s being lied to by the British military but what she doesn’t realise is just how far up the chain this lie goes. She’s prepared to go halfway around the world to discover the truth behind just what is going on at Maralinga….

Recently I decided to make a conscious effort to balance out my reading a little more and stop ignoring the books sitting on my TBR shelf that had been there some time. I had a bit of fun deciding to choose a title that had been there for about a year and ended up picking up Maralinga. I went to an event last year with the author, Australian TV and stage actress Judy Nunn (you can read about that here) and she was such an amazing speaker, so passionate and enthusiastic that I ended up buying myself a huge pile of her books, 4 of which I got signed by her. She wrote something different in each one, relating to the book itself and the dedication in this one is that it will contain a few shocks.

I have to admit, I had no idea about Maralinga until listening to Nunn talk and it seems that I’m not alone. There are plenty of Australian’s who know relatively little about it, as many facts were kept from the Australian public until after the McClelland Royal Commission exposed many facts about what had occurred there in 1984-5. I was born in 1982 and this was not something I was ever taught about in school.

Maralinga is a work of fiction, but it weaves in real events with thorough research. It was hard not be drawn in, this was a fascinating story, basically an entire population of a country oblivious while another country’s army exploded nuclear bombs in their backyard. Nunn plays up on the rumours that local Aboriginals were poisoned by the tests, including some really disturbing snippets from the point of view of various local nomadic Aboriginal families. While it’s never been proved that things like this did happen, it’s never been totally proved that they didn’t either.

Maralinga isn’t just a story about the nuclear testing, it’s also a love story but that part wasn’t the novel’s greatest strength. I liked Daniel and I liked Elizabeth but them together didn’t really work for me and I can’t quite put my finger on why. I think it was mostly the effort they went to in order to remain friends when Elizabeth was still shunning relationships that when they actually did step it up to the next level, it still felt like they were just friends to me. I never really got the urgency of her feelings until she decided to give up everything and go to Australia and search out the truth of what was really going on a Maralinga. Then I got it.

Meticulously researched and also wonderfully written, this is a really fascinating blend of the truth and embellishment. I actually read this book in a day, and it’s a pretty hefty size but I found it an easy page-turner and it kept me invested the whole way. There were some twists and turns that I didn’t see coming. It showcases the beauty of our desert wonderfully and also gives us a really progressive, ahead-of-her-time protagonist, someone to admire for her principles and just how far she will go to know the truth.

Very enjoyable – I’m looking forward to reading my other Judy Nunn books!

8/10

Book #209 of 2012

Maralinga is the 69th novel read and reviewed for the Australian Women Writers Challenge, 2012.

In Conversation with Judy Nunn – Local Event

Usually every Tuesday I do a Top 10 Tuesday post as part of the meme created by The Broke & The Bookish. However this topic is Top 10 Books for Halloween and to be honest, I have never thought of Australia as having anything to do with Halloween and it’s not a holiday I bother about or celebrate or take part in. I also don’t really read many books that I would find appropriate so I am skipping this week and instead talking about an event I went to yesterday.

My local library in partnership with a local bookstore have been hosting author events with today being the 4th event I’ve attended. Yesterday, Judy Nunn, a prolific Australian author made a stop as part of her tour supporting her newest release, Tiger Men (more on that later).

Judy Nunn is a former stage and television actress with some younger Australian readers probably remembering her best for her 13 year role as Ailsa (Alf’s wife) in Home & Away, a local soap. Before her role in Home & Away, she also appeared in shows such as The Box, Prisoner and Sons & Daughters. In the year 2000, after juggling acting and writing, she left the soap saying goodbye to Ailsa and began a full-time career as an author.

I’m a Home & Away tragic and have been since probably 1992 or 1993 when I was 10 or 11. As with some previous events, even though I hadn’t read any of the novels of the author visiting, I went along anyway to learn about them and their books. So far I’ve discovered some interesting authors that way, namely Sara Foster  and Maria Snyder. I was interested in the sort of books Judy Nunn was writing so I headed down to the library to attend the session and also support my local bookstore because the owner works very hard in organising these events and I always enjoy going along to boost the numbers.

In a slight difference from previous events, this one was a bit of a Q&A style talk with a ‘host’ asking questions/guiding the chat and Judy Nunn answering (and often going on amusing and interesting tangents). This worked well because it allowed for those tangents but also there was someone there with the questions in front of them to bring the focus back and make sure that each question got answered and each topic was covered. We started off with a bit of background  in Judy’s theatre and television work and then moved onto her novels, chatting a little bit about each one in order. She spoke about how her first novel, The Glitter Game was based a little on her time taping The Box and how some people are recognizable and that interestingly, the only complaints she got were from actors who couldn’t see themselves in any of her characters! Her second adult novel, Centre Stage took place in the theatre and from there, during the writing of her third novel, Araluen, a shift started and she began to explore the world of historical fiction.

With the exception of one (which features an Australian character but set mostly in Vanuatu) all her novels take place predominantly in Australia. She has visited wide and varied places such as Kalgoorlie, the Barossa Valley, Darwin, Sydney, the Snowy Mountains, Perth, the desert of South Australia for Maralinga and her latest novel is set in Tasmania.

She mentioned that after the release of Maralinga which is about the nuclear testing facility that the British set up in SA after WW2, which many Australian’s know relatively little about, she was often invited to go on radio programs and the like and talk about what occurred there. Although she was proud that her book was an expose or ‘informer’ of sorts for a broader audience, it is a work of fiction and she didn’t feel right talking about the facility and what occurred there in that capacity because she did take artistic license and isn’t a non-fiction author where there are just facts. She demonstrated the blurring of fiction and reality when she was telling a story about an old wardrobe that she found in the first house she bought, which she later built a book around and mentioned something that she found in the wardrobe that she immediately then remembered she made up/embellished in her book based on the real event.

We then got to her latest novel, Tiger Men which this event was in support of. She said that her husband was from Tasmania and she’d spent a lot of time there over the years but had never set a book there. Tiger Men comprises 3 families and only a couple of generations which she said was infinitely harder to structure and line up than a previous novel which spanned 250-odd years and 7 generations in the one family. She found the 3 families more difficult as she had to make sure each generation appeared at around the same time so that they could interact and the events had to roughly coincide for the families whereas previously with the one family she could make them appear and die when it suited her. Tiger Men deals with the story of some wealthy families post-convict times who plundered the land in Tassie and basically got very rich off its bounty – the name refers both to a nickname of big business men and also a plot that involves the basic extermination of the Tasmanian Tiger, which had a bounty placed on it by the government because they were (probably falsely) accused of killing sheep and livestock.

The talking/interview part of the event lasted just over an hour and there was a lot covered in that time! Judy was definitely very adept at speaking and certainly due to her background, was very entertaining. At the end there were basically no questions because everything had been covered! I was pretty much one of the last to get my books signed because I was trying to decide which to buy (they all had sounded very interesting while she was talking about them) and she spent a lot of time chatting to people as she signed their books and took some photos. I ended up purchasing 4 – her latest, Tiger Men and a couple that had interested me the most from her backlist although I still need to pick up one more that I really want to read as there were no copies of that one by the time I bought mine! I think just about all the books for sale had been cleared out so it was a very successful event.

Myself and Judy – she signed my 4 books and talked about each one with me. I asked her did she have a sentimental favourite but she said no, they were all her favourites at any stage and we compared it a bit to asking someone if they had a favourite child! She told me that she’s very proud of Maralinga and that she knows which of her books are better, writing wise, than others. She said that Centre Stage is the most autobiographical.

The books I purchased were:

Onto the TBR shelf they go!