The Great Australian Lonliness

by Ernestine Hill

Ernestine Hill's The Great Australian Loneliness is the account of a remarkable journey—100,000 miles across the Australian bush, a woman alone. From the Kimberley to Oodnadatta, Ernestine Hill experienced the strange loveliness of the outback. Her enchanting account of that epic journey has become a classic of travel writing.

Genres: Australia, History

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1937

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best book I have read in years, but I quite understand why others will not feel the same. She is an excellent writer, every paragraph is of interest, the book moves very well and is totally packed with data and information. It is so full of information I could not read it fast, and went back and re-read chapters often so as to digest all they contained. The author paints a picture of the then outback and remote areas of Western Australia, The Northern Territory and parts of South Australia of the 1930's. She paints with words. For anyone who has traveled through these areas subsequently, they should find the book fascinating.

[Kym · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was a true delight to read this book. As an Australian who has travelled to many places in the world I feel ashamed that I have been so ignorant of so much that is in my own backyard. This book changed that. Not only is it a plunging back into a past that was not that long ago, but an amazing record of a country rich in stories. I’ve always flippantly agreed that Australia lacks the history of those far flung European cities we all clamour to see. But have been blind to the history that this ancient land holds deep within it’s rivers (that sometimes flow only twice a year), the cavernous limestone caves in the middle of deserts, the deep underground waterways that flow beneath the dry and lonely landscape above, the ancient ever watching crocodiles that patrol the riverbeds in the top end, the Afghan cameleers, the pearler’s, swagmen and the many tribes of the native people of this unbelievable country. There’s plenty of history in this beautiful country called Australia and it’s made from so much more than ruins of castles. This book is a treasure. It’s a record of a past that is quietly slipping away. The stories that filled that wide open landscape out in the Great Australian Loneliness are recorded here in this book and it’s well worth the read 🦘🇦🇺

[Bruce Graham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Henry James sarcastically described long novels as “large, loose, baggy monsters.” Readers of The Great Australian Loneliness embrace the description: Wrapping a continent into her swag, she filled the big empty with stories. Like the continent she describes, some are whoppers.
Cartographers called blank spaces “sleeping beauties”: Ernestine woke some of them.
Early on in this love letter to Australia, she compares it to an opal: “colourless crystal, you must hold it up to the light to catch the flashing fires of romance.” Her prose too, has an opaline sparkle. Here she rhapsodizes the opal: “For such is the fortune of opal, jewel of luck that knows no law, crystallized light of the sea. A jagged scrap of the mineral magic lies on my table as I write—white fire of the diamond, living red of the ruby, peacock wings of emerald and turquoise and the ‘heaven-hued’ sapphire, misted over with the roseate nacre of a pearl, a jewel of sea-change and distilled sunlights. A sedimentary silica of pure crystal, it is yet non-crystalline. That prism of shattered radiance is nothing but an optical illusion, the splitting of the spectrum by microscopic veins into the most brilliant colours of earth and fire and water.”
It’s not all coruscating, scintillating stuff though. Sometimes it’s really rough. As for cavilling about her use of the ‘N’ word- no, not Niger or Nigeria, or Knee Grow, which all derive from the Latin, niger, nigr- meaning ‘black’. Let’s take a look.
Ecocide, the fire stick irrevocably changed Australia’s face. Not mentioned in the comments. Cannibalism and its rules. Ditto. The woke joke pokes at smoke. Perennial warfare and rape. Not mentioned. But enough of woke vomit.
A couple highlights for me were her coverage of Broome and Darwin, two of my favorite places in Australia.

[Eamonn Kelly · Rating 1 out of 5]

On the one hand Ernestine Hill displays an evident love of Australia's sweeping desolate majesty (at times verging on purple prose), on the other, the book has quite a bit of racism - of the kind where blokes would just call people slurs as a matter of fact.

Australia is by and large less racist than in the 1930s, at the height of the White Australia Policy and the Stolen Generation, when this was written, however not much more than a week ago a wave of anti-immigration protests swept the capital cities, attended by full on nazis and fair-dinkum types who've had an absolute gutful. So I'm not so sure anymore - perhaps we've all gotten better at hiding it. This book is a product of its time, not worth reading unless you're seeking a contemporary depiction of the ideology of a White-Anglo supremacist. Certainly, Hill is more interested in depicting the landscape than she is in furthering any ideological message, but it speaks volumes that the racism is so casual as if her thinking is totally immersed within this repulsive ideology - the racism isn't something that the reader can just ignore, it isn't even hidden. I dunno about you, but my Tall Poppies won't stomach the smugly superior tone that Hill writes in here. This book is better left in the past - Australia is a better, kinder place because of its diversity, let us latecomers not forget that we are imports ourselves.

[Lucia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Struggled with the racist and colonial mentality of yonder years shining through, though she does redeem herself in parts with a respect for those who aren't white. I also found the writing style moved at a fast but shallow pace, so you might get the stories of five people on one page but they are so sparse that I struggled to actually see the point of introducing someone and ending their story in three sentences. It was an interesting insight into the outback Australia of that period of time though.

[Brendan Beirne · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fabulous journey in time through an outback Australia that doesn’t exist anymore. Ernestine Hill was a brilliant writer and fearless traveller. Her descriptions of characters and place are vivid and memorable. The casual racism of the period is clear and Ernestine was writing primarily for the newspapers of the time so had to fit in with their agendas.
There is an excellent book on Ernestine’s life ‘Call of the Outback’ by Marianne Van Velzen. Highly recommended if you’re interested in great Australian female writers

[Christopher Cassidy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Completed this book. I found it a very interesting narrative of how "remote" Australia was in the 1930's. Particularly interesting to read about towns and places I have visited in recent times.

The description and assessments of the characters she meets are enjoyable. Whilst there is an element of emotive journalism and evident politically incorrect phraseology judged through today's lens, it is, nonetheless, a very enjoyable read.

I recommend it to those readers who like Australiana and look forward to finding another written by Ernestine.

[Garry Germon · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read the first 50 pages and found the book to be a book of its time. I found her description of the locations she visited to be superficial and lifeless.