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Alan

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The Worst Country in the World: The true story of an Australian pioneer family

by Patsy Trench (Goodreads Author)

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Reading for the 2nd time

read in February 2020

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Alan said: " This is a very good read. It’s the story of the author’s forebears, who colonised Australia in the very early days, little more than two decades after Captain Cook ‘discovered’ this strange new land on the other side of the globe. Like a lot of moder This is a very good read. It’s the story of the author’s forebears, who colonised Australia in the very early days, little more than two decades after Captain Cook ‘discovered’ this strange new land on the other side of the globe. Like a lot of modern biographers, the author puts herself into the story, telling us of her many trips Down Under to further her researches. By and large her presence adds depth and texture to the occasionally patchy material she garners. And in places her own voyage of discovery is a dramatic parallel to that of her characters. As she must, she uses her imagination to flesh out the detail, skilfully evoking the conditions undergone on the long voyage undertaken by her great-great-great-great grandmother in 1801. The fact that she was a willing emigrant, one of the very first, rather than a convict, makes her story all the more interesting.

Once the author’s ancestor is in Australia, we get a sharp taste of the crude settlements out there, the hard graft required to survive, let alone thrive, in strange, often hostile conditions. The reader gets a real sense of a community being built, step by step and year by year.

It was pleasing to see that Trench is careful not to talk too freely of the aboriginal people. She admits she is not qualified. Instead she focuses on the extraordinary strength and stoicism of her emigrants, dwelling mostly on the womenfolk.

Writers of histories often have to decide how they will enliven certain scenes, bring to life the characters they are following. Trench has decided to intersperse her out-and-out historical account with a series of fictionalised scenes based on what she knows, or can confidently surmise, to be true. That way, of course, lie authorial pitfalls, but the fact is that this author treads carefully and, for the most part, avoids them. Her statements about ‘how things were’ tends to be tenuous, and her tone self-effacing enough to ensure that the occasional lapse doesn’t really matter.

This is a great story set a raw, young country. It vividly portrays the strength, courage and grit it took to survive there. In the closing pages, Trench seems to be promising a second volume, based on her family’s further adventures in Oz. Bring it on. ...more "

Mar 11, 2020 06:15AM · see review