Black Sheep: Journey To Borroloola

by Nicholas Jose

This impassioned book - part quest, part travel book - by a novelist and writer widely published in the US and Europe - is based on two interlocking personal histories set on Australia's tropical Gulf of Carpentaria - border-line country seldom explored in writing. A quest for two very different the legendary Roger Jose, an itinerant European who lived in a remote Aboriginal community for half a century, in an upside down water tank with his beloved Aboriginal wife, reading literature and evolving his own radical bush philosophy. The police note on him was 'living blackfellow'. (For the author this is a personal quest, since Roger Jose claimed to be a long-lost member of his family.) Two hundred miles away one of the most degraded Aboriginal communities in Australia has been fighting for its rights. Their charismatic leader is Murrandoo Yanner, a young man committed to self-determination for his people and control over their vast traditional territory, with its rich natural resources. This highly original book is the response of a contemporary writer to his own heritage.

Genres: Biography Memoir

304 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Born Robert Nicholas Jose in London, England, to Australian parents, Nicholas Jose grew up mostly in Adelaide, South Australia. He was educated at the Australian National University and Oxford University. He has traveled extensively, particularly in China, where he worked from 1986 to 1990. He was President of Sydney PEN from 2002 to 2005 and currently holds the Chair of Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide.

(Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Black Sheep, Journey to Borroloola by Nicholas Jose is such an interesting book! Published in 2002, it tells the story of Nicholas Jose’s quest to trace a mystery relative and how that turned into an odyssey of self-discovery. It was shortlisted for the The Age Book of the Year in 2003 which was won that year by Of a Boy by Sonya Hartnett. In the non-fiction category it was Charles Condor: The Last Bohemian by Ann Galbally that won the award. Sometimes really good books don’t win awards the way they perhaps should…

Nicholas Jose is the author of several collections of short stories, essays, non-fiction and seven notable novels
•Rowena’s Field (1984) Nominated for the Vogel Prize
•Paper Nautilus (1987) See my review
•Avenue of Eternal Peace (1989) Nominated for the 1990 Miles Franklin Prize
•The Rose Crossing (1994)
•The Custodians (1997), on my TBR, Shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize 1997 (South-East Asia)
•The Red Thread (2000)
•Original Face ( 2005), on my TBR, Sydney Morning Herald Best Books of 2005

and also the editor of the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature which is my bible for information about Australian books and writing. (You can find some of these at Readings if you type the author’s name into the search box.)

But Black Sheep, Journey to Borroloola defies categorisation: it’s part history, travel book, memoir, and quest. Adelaide as we know is the most respectable of Australia’s capital cities, but it was from Adelaide that Jose set out in search of a disreputable relative, known to him from family rumour rather than any established relationship. Out of sheer curiosity, Jose travelled the astonishing distance to remote Borroloola on the Macarthur River in the Northern Territory, 50 km upstream from the Gulf of Carpentaria. In the 2011 census it had a population of 926. It was there that he discovered the eccentric life of Roger Jose…

To see the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2014/05/31/bl...

[Yuri Sharon · Rating 3 out of 5]

It would have been hard, in the 1950s, to imagine a more “respectable” family background than that of young Nicholas Jose, great-grandson of an Anglican Dean of Adelaide. There was a degree of awkwardness, then, over a certain Roger Jose, a white hermit living with his Aboriginal wife in an up-turned water-tank at remote Borroloola, on the Gulf of Carpentaria. The Joses of Adelaide looked up the family tree, could not see where Roger fitted, murmured their amusement and – well, Borroloola was on the other side of the continent.
The seeds of Roger Jose’s fame were already sown when he died in 1963. The young David Attenborough had filmed the white-bearded, metho-drinking, Shakespeare-reciting hermit; and Douglas Lockwood had written that Jose taught him “more about simplicity and humility than any other man”.
It took time, but eventually Nicholas Jose, one of Australia’s most accomplished novelists, found his curiosity deepening. In seeking the identity of Roger Jose, Nicholas could examine his own sense of belonging. Above all, he wanted a connection to “someone who had earned his belonging in this country”. So, with a few useful introductions and accompanied by his friend New York Bob, Jose set out to visit Borroloola and the Gulf country.
Jose describes his book as a wandering work, “bringing along the baggage of an over-stocked mind with all its stray threads”. It fits pretty much into that personal odyssey sub-genre of English travel writing – more, I think, reminiscent of Chatwin’s Viceroy of Quidah than his Songlines. The reader is taken on a rummage through the historic literature. We are shown Borroloola through the eyes of Alfred Searcy, customs officer for the region in the 1880s; and Bill Harney, small-time pastoralist, cattle-duffer, trepanger, patrol-officer, author and tour guide – one of Roger Jose’s circle of “no-hoper derros”.
One of the more intriguing stories retold in Black Sheep is that of the Borroloola library. Started by a police officer in the late 19th century, it eventually consisted of about 3000 books. Many were the pulp fiction of the day, but the great books of Western civilisation were also on the shelves in the court house. Prisoners in the adjacent gaol always had something to read and it is no surprise that such a library in such a place has taken on legendary proportions and mythic status. Roger Jose was said to have read all the books in the library before, so the story goes, they were eaten by white ants. It fact what remained of the library after WWII was packed off to Darwin, where it was “lost” – but why spoil a good story with facts.
Along with a lot of good yarns about Roger, Nicholas gleaned a few biographical details: He married Maggie, an Aboriginal woman, in Darwin in 1926. They then moved to Borroloola, accompanied by Maggie’s younger sister, Biddy, who Roger married after Maggie died in 1957. The trio now share a bush grave.
Finally, of course, the heart of the book remains the question of who Roger Jose may have been. A “bohemian” great-uncle is given a speculative, suspicious glance, but any family connection between Roger and Nicholas Jose is yet to be discovered. You have to say, though, just looking at photos of the two men, there is something about their eyebrows, their foreheads and … yes, the nose – definitely a resemblance there!