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Behind the Mountain: Return to Tasmania
When he was 20, Conrad left his home in Tasmania for Oxford, London, New York; 20 years later, he returnedto rediscover the island and his relationship to it. The author of Imagining America evokes an extraordinary portrait of his native land, a brilliant, merciless portrait. Tasmania, he writes, is Australia's little Australia, doubly isolated frm the world, a place whose settlers attempted to reconcile Arcady with Alcatraz. When its name was changed from Van Dieman's Land to Tasmania, the colonists conveniently forgot its brutish origins and re-wrote history, dismissing from memory the horrors of Port Arthur prison and aboriginal genocide. Mt. Wellington, rising behind his childhood home in Hobart, represented the unknown to young Conrad. His journey begins there, taking him to the roadless, inhospitable, inclement southwest coast; to a grisly convict museum; to Flinders Island, whose residents have turned it into a monumental junkyard. Continuing his exploration, he visits mining areas, abandoned farms, ghost towns and graveyards. He sees the landscape as part savage Eden, part factory with its own manufactured sceneryzinc works that taunt nature with useless, extravagant art, power lines supplanting nature by technology. Dead gum trees are "twisted in arthritic agonies but unbowed"; they are succeeded by giant pylons, "trees transformed into girders of metal." Conrad conveys no romantic empathy with a pristine environment, but a sense of land as adversary; people have been able to live in Tasmania only by ravaging the land. National self-image alternates between gentle English villagers and brawling frontier Americans. Artists and writers have made Tasmania habitable by depicting a fiction; local poets dream of England and awaken to a different reality. Romantic dream or romantic nightmare: a Switzerland of the Pacific or an Appalachia of the Antarctic? Conrad invokes powerful images of a remote, desolate, exotic land; ultimately, he accepts the fact that when you leave home, it travels with you. Part autobiography, part history, part travelogue, this is a wholly memorable memoir.
232 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1988
About the author
Peter Conrad
129 books29 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 26, 2021
Ugh. This book is indescribably sad to me - and not for the reason Conrad intended.
Look, Peter Conrad is an unrepentant snob. Anyone who's read his work (or even just read reviews of his work) knows this. He has an eye for the aesthetic line, and some of his sequences - viewing Tasmania from above, or poking at her less well-known coastlines - are certainly strings of beautiful words. Of course, Conrad is himself well-known for picking an image or symbol and then forcing it on to the subject matter whether the matter suits it or not. He does it here too, and not infrequently. In his desire to attest that all of Australia is an accident, Conrad uses the image of the heads of Sydney Cove which, he asserts, were settled by accident after the First Fleet mistook them for Botany Bay. From my understanding of history, Phillip and the Fleet did indeed land in Botany Bay for a few days in that fateful January of 1788 before deciding it was not promising, and then actively relocated to make their landing at Sydney Cove. But, for Conrad, facts are merely ugly blots on the canvas of metaphor, more easily swiped away if you sell your art to an audience who have never seen the original from which it was painted. Thus I remain rather suspicious even of the good.
The moments of coruscating beauty, seeking - and often finding - an animistic presence in the Tasmanian wilderness that still seems determined to thrust away the humans who should never have found it in the first place, are, in themselves, perfectly satisfying. (It's a little odd that, although he writes with some insight about the experiences of the massacred Tasmanian Indigenous people, he at other times seems to be suggesting that the island of Tasmania would be happiest if no human had ever found it.) But the core thrust of the book is rather unpleasant - I would suspect - for millions of Australians. Ultimately, Conrad is one of those people who hated the place he was born -- loathed it -- despised it. Every moment of his childhood resonated with small-mindedness, with a lack of true history, with a seeming denial of culture and defiance against class. As soon as he graduated university, he ritually burned all of his belongings - except his "tea chests" containing his beloved books - and escaped to Oxford, presumably never to return until he had to write this cathartic book. Even his poor parents, whom he implies are still alive at the time of writing, are routinely, if politely, criticised for their spelling mistakes in letters sent to their beloved son on the other side of the world, for their petty habit of enjoying the infinitesimal, transient tonal changes to the mountain outside their window, or for their unforgivable taste in middle-brow British and American mass-market library books!
To be clear, anyone has the right to dislike their home town (of course). Living in Melbourne, I know plenty of "ex-pats" from country towns or our far-flung states and territories who have no intention of ever going back for a period greater than the Easter long weekend. That is one's individual prerogative, and I can certainly appreciate that the bookish child with a sensitivity toward poetry may not have found himself at home in the Hobart of the 1950s. Fair enough. Childhood trauma of some kind or another defines everyone, and I am glad that he found the world that he sought elsewhere across the sea (Thalatta! Thalatta!, to use a reference he might appreciate). But it is clear from the first chapter that this is designed for an overseas audience primarily, and that... that upsets me on some level! I hope I'm not a nationalist (although I'll accept the charge of patriot) but the taint of elitism sweeps out from the pages of this book. The few modern Australians whom Conrad deigns to speak with on his royal return visit are invariably savages, dimwits, or well-intentioned provincials, unaware that they are chronicling the wrong parts of history, missing out on the bigger picture, somehow seemingly content with their fluffy tea-cosy and a biscuit, while their native son is off in Oxford writing a book about Tristram Shandy which they will never have the wherewithal to attempt. Any Australian reading this will be able to mentally contradict Down Home's tawdry implications with many threads of lived experience; for the British (and perhaps, begrudgingly on Conrad's part, American) reader, this may serve as the prevailing narrative of the great south land. Not that writers should have to work on behalf of the Tourist Board, as someone once commented in a review of Patrick White's first novel, but if I wanted to read torture porn, this would not be my first choice. It's simply, yet unrelentingly, sad.
Conrad is entitled to his opinions. And, of course, as all books of this ilk must, he concludes by making some peace with the island, with the Australian experiment as a whole. He won't come back, of course, and he won't encourage you the reader to visit or, god forbid, live there! But he also will not afford Australia - and Australians - a right-of-reply. This is an apologia from a man who deeply felt the famous "cultural cringe", trying to explain to his colonial overlords why Australians shouldn't be judged (our land has so much beauty, even if we went ahead and ruined all of it!) but at the same time making it clear - with a foghorn - that he's simply a transplanted Britisher. I'm reminded of that great sitcom character (and a British one, so it's okay, Conrad, if you're reading this!) Hyacinth Bucket. Visiting a stately home on an open day, she stands tantalisingly near the bollards which divide the public section of the mansion from the private living quarters of the aristocrats, attempting to give the impression - with well-timed glances and her imperious tone - to other passers-by that she's a friend of the family, rather than merely another petty-bourgeois upstart in a big hat. Her husband intimates that she is being dishonest, to which Hyacinth responds: "It's only an accident of birth that I'm not someone important."
I wouldn't want to turn readers away from Down Home but, do yourself a favour. Buy a second-hand copy, rip out eight or ten pages at random, discard the rest of the book, and read those pages independent of context. If you're lucky, you'll get some elegant prose without needing to concern yourself with either its accuracy or its implications.
Look, Peter Conrad is an unrepentant snob. Anyone who's read his work (or even just read reviews of his work) knows this. He has an eye for the aesthetic line, and some of his sequences - viewing Tasmania from above, or poking at her less well-known coastlines - are certainly strings of beautiful words. Of course, Conrad is himself well-known for picking an image or symbol and then forcing it on to the subject matter whether the matter suits it or not. He does it here too, and not infrequently. In his desire to attest that all of Australia is an accident, Conrad uses the image of the heads of Sydney Cove which, he asserts, were settled by accident after the First Fleet mistook them for Botany Bay. From my understanding of history, Phillip and the Fleet did indeed land in Botany Bay for a few days in that fateful January of 1788 before deciding it was not promising, and then actively relocated to make their landing at Sydney Cove. But, for Conrad, facts are merely ugly blots on the canvas of metaphor, more easily swiped away if you sell your art to an audience who have never seen the original from which it was painted. Thus I remain rather suspicious even of the good.
The moments of coruscating beauty, seeking - and often finding - an animistic presence in the Tasmanian wilderness that still seems determined to thrust away the humans who should never have found it in the first place, are, in themselves, perfectly satisfying. (It's a little odd that, although he writes with some insight about the experiences of the massacred Tasmanian Indigenous people, he at other times seems to be suggesting that the island of Tasmania would be happiest if no human had ever found it.) But the core thrust of the book is rather unpleasant - I would suspect - for millions of Australians. Ultimately, Conrad is one of those people who hated the place he was born -- loathed it -- despised it. Every moment of his childhood resonated with small-mindedness, with a lack of true history, with a seeming denial of culture and defiance against class. As soon as he graduated university, he ritually burned all of his belongings - except his "tea chests" containing his beloved books - and escaped to Oxford, presumably never to return until he had to write this cathartic book. Even his poor parents, whom he implies are still alive at the time of writing, are routinely, if politely, criticised for their spelling mistakes in letters sent to their beloved son on the other side of the world, for their petty habit of enjoying the infinitesimal, transient tonal changes to the mountain outside their window, or for their unforgivable taste in middle-brow British and American mass-market library books!
To be clear, anyone has the right to dislike their home town (of course). Living in Melbourne, I know plenty of "ex-pats" from country towns or our far-flung states and territories who have no intention of ever going back for a period greater than the Easter long weekend. That is one's individual prerogative, and I can certainly appreciate that the bookish child with a sensitivity toward poetry may not have found himself at home in the Hobart of the 1950s. Fair enough. Childhood trauma of some kind or another defines everyone, and I am glad that he found the world that he sought elsewhere across the sea (Thalatta! Thalatta!, to use a reference he might appreciate). But it is clear from the first chapter that this is designed for an overseas audience primarily, and that... that upsets me on some level! I hope I'm not a nationalist (although I'll accept the charge of patriot) but the taint of elitism sweeps out from the pages of this book. The few modern Australians whom Conrad deigns to speak with on his royal return visit are invariably savages, dimwits, or well-intentioned provincials, unaware that they are chronicling the wrong parts of history, missing out on the bigger picture, somehow seemingly content with their fluffy tea-cosy and a biscuit, while their native son is off in Oxford writing a book about Tristram Shandy which they will never have the wherewithal to attempt. Any Australian reading this will be able to mentally contradict Down Home's tawdry implications with many threads of lived experience; for the British (and perhaps, begrudgingly on Conrad's part, American) reader, this may serve as the prevailing narrative of the great south land. Not that writers should have to work on behalf of the Tourist Board, as someone once commented in a review of Patrick White's first novel, but if I wanted to read torture porn, this would not be my first choice. It's simply, yet unrelentingly, sad.
Conrad is entitled to his opinions. And, of course, as all books of this ilk must, he concludes by making some peace with the island, with the Australian experiment as a whole. He won't come back, of course, and he won't encourage you the reader to visit or, god forbid, live there! But he also will not afford Australia - and Australians - a right-of-reply. This is an apologia from a man who deeply felt the famous "cultural cringe", trying to explain to his colonial overlords why Australians shouldn't be judged (our land has so much beauty, even if we went ahead and ruined all of it!) but at the same time making it clear - with a foghorn - that he's simply a transplanted Britisher. I'm reminded of that great sitcom character (and a British one, so it's okay, Conrad, if you're reading this!) Hyacinth Bucket. Visiting a stately home on an open day, she stands tantalisingly near the bollards which divide the public section of the mansion from the private living quarters of the aristocrats, attempting to give the impression - with well-timed glances and her imperious tone - to other passers-by that she's a friend of the family, rather than merely another petty-bourgeois upstart in a big hat. Her husband intimates that she is being dishonest, to which Hyacinth responds: "It's only an accident of birth that I'm not someone important."
I wouldn't want to turn readers away from Down Home but, do yourself a favour. Buy a second-hand copy, rip out eight or ten pages at random, discard the rest of the book, and read those pages independent of context. If you're lucky, you'll get some elegant prose without needing to concern yourself with either its accuracy or its implications.
June 17, 2011
A brilliant personal history of Tasmania. Line by line, the book was difficult to read because the author's descriptions of the Tasmanian landscape and his apocalyptic vision of life there were so allusive and original that my mind kept wandering off into other fruitful contemplations. This is a meditation on place so specific that it transcends the circumstance of the author and the specific place he finds himself in and becomes a universal meditation on what it means to be from somewhere and even to be somewhere.
January 19, 2025
I picked up this book at a used book store and like the author, I would be traveling back to the place of my childhood, Tanzania (often confused with Tasmania). The book starts well with good descriptions of Tasmania and Hobart, and the ending is good, too, but the intervening 20 chapters are too abstract as he explores Tasmania's place in the world. I found it very little to help me understand the place. In the end, disappointed.
July 15, 2024
An absolute bizarre read. I was thrilled to begin with as it’s packed with beautiful vivid descriptions. I was barely halfway through when I realised there was no plot, it was just Conrad describing his hometown and then ragging on it. I don’t think I would recommend this book to anyone I know. Definitely best suited to a Tasmanian or a traveller, otherwise good luck holding focus.
January 3, 2016
I got this book at a used book sale a while ago and started reading it partway through our trip to Tasmania. It was cool to read about places I'd just been or knew I'd see in the next few days. It probably wouldn't be very interesting if I wasn't there.
July 8, 2015
I didn't finish this. The writing is superb but the subject didn't grab me that strongly.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews