Rapidly sailing into dreamland after sitting up late to watch the first part of Sam Neill's informative voyage In the Wake of Captain Cook , I snapped to attention on hearing author Xavier Herbert mentioned by Phillip Adams on Late Night Live in connection with the book (left ) by Craig Munro .
In the interview with Munro , Herbert's prolix novel writing style was mentioned and Capricornia , based on his experiences in the Northern Territory , which won the Australian 1938 Sesqui-Centenary Literary Award and the epic Poor Fellow My Country , winner of the 1975 Miles Franklin Award for Australian Literature .
A 1990 edition copy of Poor Fellow My Country , 1465 pages including a two page glossary of Aboriginal terms , (Bigger than the Bible-Xavier's proud boast ), with an Albert Namatjira Central Australia painting on the cover , and an inscription wishing a woman a happy 50th birthday, was recently found in a Townsville op shop .
By Peter Simon
I had a memorable relationship with Xavier . At one stage , he said I was old enough to pass as his son-but uglier than any one he may have sired .
In 1980, , after an absence of 40 years, he returned to the Territory to give evidence in an Aboriginal land claim hearing in Darwin . He had long advocated land rights ,saying : " Until we give back to the blackman just a bit of land that was his , and give it back without provisos , without strings to snatch it back , without anything but complete generosity of spirit in concession for the evil we have done him-until we do that ,we shall remain what we have always been so far , a people without integrity, not a nation, but a community of thieves ."
While I was driving him about Darwin, we were overtaken by a car which bore a quirky message : I'M NOT A DIRTY OLD MAN-I'M A SEXY SENIOR CITIZEN . When I pointed it out to him, he laughed , asked me to repeat what it said and wrote it down in a notebook .
When I took him down the track to places where he had worked and through which he travelled during the 1920s and 1930s , he spoke about the urge to write another novel set in the Territory , based on Alice Springs in the Centre, the other two having been about the Top End .
When I showed him the remains of a WW ll explosives magazine cut into a hill , with an adjoining railway line , at Adelaide River, he became excited.
In the next novel, he said , he had in mind a "renegade priest " , an Aboriginal, who hid in the hills and emerged from caves to make raids. With great enthusiasm, he walked up and down the site, stood on the railway line , gazing out over the surrounding country, declaring it "wonderful."
Another key character he envisaged in the novel was a prominent newspaper man fed up by the way the nation was being run .This person , he added, would "sneak " a controversial editorial into his newspaper on a subject which would cause uproar in the land .
How could such a thing be performed on a newspaper, he asked . After much discussion, he seemed to accept the idea that a Sunday , when the newspaper was being prepared by a small staff, for a Monday morning edition on a publication like the Sydney Morning Herald might be the best time to strike .
At his request , I tried to arrange a meeting with Rupert Murdoch as he was deeply interested in the rising media mogul . There is a letter in the files relating to this .
With him , I drove to Alice Springs , went to Pine Gap , where he was photographed (above) at the entrance , called in at the casino , spoke to Ian Barker ,QC, who would go on to prosecute in the Azaria Chamberlain case , visited pioneer aviator Eddie Connellan .
In early 1982, Xavier was working on the novel with the tentative title ,Billygoat Hill , an Alice feature , later Me and My Shadow
The shadow referred to here was not that of an Aborigine , nor Xavier's wife, Sadie, but Queensland born journalist , political speech writer and editor Brian Penton , who wrote two novels about Queensland pioneering landtakers and had been highly critical of Capricornia ,in the Sydney Daily Telegraph.
In January l984, Xavier drove to Alice in a Landrover with a small trailer , became ill . He was visited in hospital by the famous Australian painter Sir Sidney Nolan and his wife, Mary ,who were in the Centre shooting a film .
Nolan had visited Xavier at his home in Redlynch , Cairns, in l981 to tell him he wanted to use scenes from Poor Fellow My Country in a mural to mark the bicentenary of white Australian settlement .
On that occasion, Herbert told the artist the only true Australian national hero had been Ned Kelly. Nolan responded by doing a drawing for Xavier in John Mahoney's book, I am Ned Kelly.
Xavier got me to ring the Wentworth Hotel in Sydney where Nolan was staying to check if he had followed up some matter they had discussed. Then Xavier criticised Nolan for accepting a knighthood .
Death for Herbert came on November 10,l984. He was buried in the Alice Springs cemetery on November 15 ; Sadie's ashes were placed on the grave along with the Eureka flag, Aboriginal flags and handfulls of paperbark to mark his association with Val McGinnness's people from the Finnis River .
Val , closely associated with Xavier , with relatives from Darwin and Cairns , performed a ritual smoking to appease Herbert's spirit.
Among those in the funeral service was Pat Dodson, Australia's first Aboriginal Catholic priest who left the church, became an activist and an ALP politician .
He had been ordained in 1975, at the time saying he understood the deep seated bitterness of urban black activists and although he did not agree with all that they said or did , he had sympathy with their aims and emphasised his support for the task of improving the welfare of Aboriginal people .
He worked in the Diocese of Darwin ,which covered the entire Northern Territory. Herbert had spoken to him in Alice Springs in 1981 and told me he was a most interesting man, who had given him many ideas for the renegade priest in the proposed novel.
The novel was never finished. It was said to have been "all over the place ". Clearly self autobiographical, it dwelt, in part, with his guilt over Sadie and other women in his life , with extensive sexual descriptions .The manuscript and some of his other papers were embargoed to avoid scandal.
While carrying out research on Xavier , I made contact with several people who died soon after I interviewed them , almost as if mentioning his name hastened their demise . The wife of a prominent literary figure felt certain her husband , who had been unwell , but now much better , would like to talk to me over the phone about his association with Xavier Herbert. She returned to the phone saying he had suddenly become unwell , could not talk to me .
The above unusual memorial to Xavier Herbert is situated in the Cairns Council building near the library's drive through return books chute.
UPCOMING : More stormy weather experienced in the wake of Xavier Herbert .
