Capricornia

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Capricornia
Xavier Herbert

A saga of life in the Northern Territories and the clash of white and Aborigine cultures – one of Australia’s all-time best-selling novels and an inspiration for Baz Luhrmann’s lavish film ‘AUSTRALIA’.Capricornia has been described as one of Australia's 'great novels', a sharply observed chronicle about life in the Northern Territory of Australia and the inhumane treatment suffered by Aborigines at the hands of white men. The story is immense and rambling, laced with humour that is often as bitter and as harsh as the terrain in which it is set, and follows with irony the fortunes (and otherwise) of a range of Outback characters over a span of generations. Through their story is reflected the story of Australia, the clash of personalities and cultures that provide the substance on which today's society is founded. Above all, however, this is a novel of protest and of compassion - for the Aborigines and half-bloods of Australia's 'last frontier'.Sprawling, explosive, thronged with characters, plots and sub-plots, Capricornia is without doubt one of the best known and widely read Australian novels of the last 70 years. When it was first published it was acclaimed as 'a turning point', an 'outstanding work of social protest'. Its message is as penetrating today as it was in the 1930s when Herbert himself was official 'Protector of Aborigines' at Darwin.

XAVIER HERBERT

CAPRICORNIA

CONTENTS

Introduction

Principal Characters

The Coming of the Dingoes (#u1de48153-0cd6-5447-8f9b-f99363732081)

Psychological Effect of a Solar Topee (#ua55b72f7-8229-5a86-9624-bf1f13f9e3a9)

Significance of a Burnt Cork (#u3f2f2820-d7e0-54bc-964a-b1517780927c)

Death of a Dingo (#ude2d4e11-53e4-5e01-81e0-90c97b35a0a8)

Heir To All the Ages (#uc70758dd-d338-535d-bfc3-fd334f664a84)

The Copper Creek Train (#u80a59ba4-75d9-5f3b-8e7b-a95f6c4a34ad)

Clothes Make a Man (#uf2cae8c0-bee5-514e-87b2-d50c43c7b737)

Mars and Venus in Ascendancy (#u568dbaf2-8f99-5795-bcad-5e0b8fdd4e30)

Fe Fi Fo Fum (#u026510d3-a01f-567c-8d2e-8efb70c043eb)

In the Midst of Life We Are in Death (#u9162a6a4-4a25-538c-8ab0-0350a408e1bb)

A Crocodile Cries (#u50889316-9363-54ef-99b7-8c35f951e491)

Dawn of a New Era (#u50c98c93-2c4d-5617-8e7c-7429f79c4dd5)

A Shotgun Wedding (#u3bf14d45-449d-541d-a610-60e19736d0fb)

Peregrinations of a Busybody (#ud83a6e0f-e596-54c3-8fe4-faa323df5bd2)

Machinations of a Jinx (#ufe70f374-4e5e-5ba6-a539-5d0754952b38)

Prosperity is Like the Tide (#u93fe1c44-bfbd-51ea-b4dc-2abf2a3183fc)

Grandson of a Sultan (#ue9e24c93-16d6-5e28-8065-40ce58edf157)

Stirring of Skeletons (#u100fad4e-6dbf-5cb7-b759-85f50b89a7ec)

God in the Silver Sea (#u15a35cd1-8d53-57ff-9bdd-d21a6d1c0b5a)

Let Our Grace be a Prayer for Forgiveness (#ub298c8ed-c1bf-5aa4-a0f2-25105ccf64c3)

Son of a Gin (#u29cda0d7-1d40-5fc3-8547-083d4446e8db)

Song of the Golden Beetle (#ud68b9f3c-0208-52ca-b8d2-2c06904e1177)

The Gossips Have Been Busy (#u30015485-684d-5f80-bd5f-08c0d0ed5337)

Oh, Don’t You Remember Black Alice? (#u20189553-1cf1-5f78-85a7-830d8505b8da)

Spinning of Fate the Spider (#u8966e752-4ead-53c8-8c0c-9dfd5617b6d3)

Death Corroboree (#u43ae5554-eb48-5701-95c8-ab687ad8868a)

Singing in the Wilderness (#u1ee90583-0ef0-559b-95e9-0e3846e6439a)

Snakes in Arcady (#u847ca0a8-47b7-5fbb-95e5-bf35d719baa5)

The Uninvited Guest (#u6254cedb-fa73-5fc9-a68d-6c7ab70595e6)

In Defence of a Prodigal Father (#ue9257e8f-0986-5449-b72a-61e508e90818)

The Devil Rides Horseback (#u4e67a4fc-5102-54a4-b0a6-5ecc4a371fed)

Wrath of the Masters of Mankind (#u68f51e7d-34fd-543c-8f49-3738e1f93a6c)

Esau Selleth His Birthright (#u77209435-a34b-5c2e-aa3f-2d2645aaa4db)

Murder Will Out (#u43b54a1b-d16e-54af-8815-da84aca5b3c0)

Who Killed Cock Robin? (#u1e0c8adb-4812-5b23-8717-a6a64b1162d3)

Back to Earth (#u00d6e8d9-b1e5-5262-95a3-2ca623122b03)

Also by Xavier Herbert

About the Author

Copyright (#ulink_6780cd38-a56c-5ea6-816a-e16e4f25a16b)

About the Publisher

INTRODUCTION (#ucc395e85-cad9-52ce-ae79-e64b7cf21d6b)

VAST and sprawling, of almost epic dimensions in that theme and counter-theme battle for dominance, Capricornia reflects Australia in its failure to create an alternative to the society depicted in its pages. It is a rich Australian cultural archive. Herbert labours over the wide brown plains of the colony of Capricornia and finds characters who are readily identifiable as Australian types. There is an unpretentiousness of style which is often appealing; but an Aboriginal reader may find the narrative painful in its seeming historical objectivity. He or she begins to read the novel and finds scenes of devastation and heartbreak as the newcomers, the ‘dingoes’ of the text, destroy Black culture without a qualm. These ‘dingoes’ are depicted as a terrifying almost elemental force, an aspect of ‘natural selection’, which destroys the old in a process of ‘evolution’ towards a new ‘synthesis’.

But this scientific theory, which provides ontological thrust to the novel, is weakened by a counter-theme of ‘Fate’. Few, if any of the characters possess the gift of analytical thought, or question their place in the universe, and I use ‘universe’ deliberately as Herbert (and critics) has stressed that his narrative is concerned with universal themes. Thus events are seen not as random occurrences but as contradictions between theme and counter-theme: natural selection and Fate. The dominance of Fate in the opening pages of the novel is alarming. Events begin to unfold from the very beginning of white settlement and the arrival of what passes for civilisation in a territory on the outskirts of the British Empire. Capricornia is founded in the heyday of that Empire, in the late nineteenth century, and from inauspicious beginnings it stagnates into the first decades of the twentieth century. This period was not at all a good time for the natives of the colonies. The Indian mutiny of 1857 underlined the problem of the ‘native’, and Capricornia too has its ‘native problem’. By the time we reach the end of the long narrative, the problem has still not been resolved. The natives and a newly engendered ‘Coloured’ race persist in a system from which there seems to be no future relief.

Capricornia is a work of great length. The original editor P. R. Stephenson claimed co-authorship on the basis of his editorial work, and perhaps the underlying sternness of the text owes something to him. Stephenson was a complex character searching for a novel in which to be featured. His politics were bizarre though they seemed not to have alarmed any of his associates. Did they listen avidly or painfully as he espoused neo-Nazism, berated the Jews and accepted the importance of Japan in the world in which the red of the British Empire blooded much of the globe? Also a strong nationalist, he sought for things Australian and found the Australian Aborigines. He declared them essential to Australian nationalism. His position in this matter is quite interesting and from it extends a bridge to those racists in the Northern Territory—the ‘Capricornia’ of the novel—who trade in Aboriginal art and artefacts and acknowledge the Aborigines as essential to their economic well-being while treating the artists with disrespect. But then Australian nationalism has always been a fragile thing of, of… Perhaps someone will find a word and put it here for me. I cannot locate a singular word of worth, though I might write ‘defiance’. Stephenson is indicative of the complex and contradictory ways in which Aboriginality is presented and articulated in this wide brown land, a great swath of which is ‘Capricornia’.

First published in 1938, Capricornia was with affectionate irony called ‘that old botch’, but it was popular from the day of its publication and has remained in print to this day. It is a bit ‘blotchy’ and if not for the sternness of its vision, I might read it as a Picaresque Romance detailing life in the distant colony of Capricornia under conditions which are barbaric to say the least. Much of the novel is taken up with the plight of the rapidly increasing mixed race. A representative of ‘the Coloureds’ is the sympathetic main character ‘Norman’. The emphasis placed on this new ‘racial’ type, who is seen as being more noble than either White or Black, reveals a mythology which uses oppositional symbolism to stress the theme and counter-theme of the novel.

In many ways, Capricornia finds a mate in the much later Maurice Chauvel film, Jedda (1955), even to the construction of characters who often seem flat and, writing from the present, slightly absurd. Jedda could also be called a Picaresque Romance, though placing them under the same label glosses over the very contradictions which the novel proposes to explore. Additionally, the underlying seriousness of Capricornia separates it from the somewhat simplistic realist film of Chauvel. Both, however, have endings which reveal the pessimism Europeans seem to get from exposure to an Australia so markedly different from Europe.

Capricornia is massive and might have become an epic in which two races with opposing cultures meet, battle it out, sink into each other’s arms and create the new Australian race, a mixture of good points from the opposing cultures; but this synthesis never occurs. Vincent Buckley writes, ‘The total impression of the book is one of great creative energy battling against a universe of appalling waste’. The vision of a ‘new race’ being created in the colony is at odds with the strong emphasis placed on Fate which plays ‘dingo to all men’—black and white. (Does this ‘Dingo of Fate’ equate with the Giant Devil Dingo of Aboriginal mythology, which devours humankind?) It is an all-compelling deity bringing to nought man and his works, including the promised new race. The novel ends on a note of pessimism. Things will continue as they are fated to do, and as I have argued before, this is a strong trait of the Australian character. Even the very metaphors applied to the land reflect this pessimism: Ancient, arid, the dead heart, flood-ridden, drought-infested, ‘one bloody thing after another’. Man is caught in the twister of Fate and goes around and around. This is stressed in the novel and there is absent a sense of control which the concept of a ‘new race’ might have been able to supply. If I read the novel correctly, the ‘new race’ in the process of being formed would eventually be able to direct its own fate. Unfortunately the vision falters and, instead of exploring any political and cultural possibilities inherent in the ‘new race’, Herbert resolves his novel by the acceptance of an overarching Fate against which mankind strives in vain.

I use ‘man’ and ‘mankind’ because I find Herbert’s novel hard and masculine. The style is close to the bald prose of reportage. Thus, the wide brown land may also be used as a metaphor to a text which is close to the popular best seller. Characters are not so much developed as created in a nutshell, that is, in a name. Thus ‘Norman’ may equal No-man or New-man, a Coloured who is a representative of the new race. Norman is a product of what Thomas Keneally in The Chant of JimmyBlacksmith has called ‘the white phallus’ (which may also be equated with white shame). He is the bastard son of the grazier Mark Shillingsworth and an unknown black woman. Norman is also the protagonist in the novel, and it is through him that the ‘new race’ is shown and a transformation attempted.

Sexual need and sexual shame mark the colonisation of Capricornia. And it is this sexual need and the resultant shame that Herbert seeks to exorcise, or transform. The sins of the Colonisers can be no sins, if the result is a New Race of Capricornians. It is not individual sexual need which is at issue; but the very ‘fact’ of natural selection. The novel represents sexual need and shame, not from the position of colonial dominance; but through the workings of the Darwinian theory of Natural Selection as applied to races. In trying to do this, Herbert begins his narrative with a wry description of the founding of the main settlements on the coast and moves on to the eventual subjugation of the whole territory of Capricornia. The novel is similar to those by Wilbur Smith which detail the founding and development of the colony of Rhodesia and its revolution into the sovereign state of Zimbabwe; but unlike these postwar novels which are firmly slotted into the genre of romantic adventure, Herbert has a more serious intent in writing the history of his colony. In truth, it is a sad colony and not one man of the stature of Cecil Rhodes appears. It is a ‘universe of appalling waste’; but one in which the promise of the ‘New Man’ is seeded. The promise is there, but remains only a promise. The New Man is confronted by Giant Devil Dingo Fate, and goes under as the crows cry dismally. Herbert’s characters are under the control of this ‘Fate’ and develop towards an acceptance of it as the overarching Law of the universe.

Uncle Oscar gives Norman an education and then property. Norman becomes a man of substance, one able to take his place in what passes for society in Capricornia. But, after journeying South for an education, he returns to find he is still a ‘half-caste’. Initially, he is shocked to discover that he does indeed belong to both races; but then he comes to the realisation that he is their heir. It is at this point that Herbert’s vision falters and Norman suffers a personal tragedy which prevents him from taking his rightful place. The Giant Devil Dingo Fate intervenes on the side of the ‘status quo’.

Herbert peoples the colony of Capricornia with a rich cast of characters, some of whom marry the native women they keep as mistresses. An important minor character is Peter Differ. Peter ‘I beg to differ’ is a failed poet and has been considered Xavier Herbert’s mouthpiece. He is a sympathetic character, and in his obligatory discourse on race relations he takes the side of the emerging ‘Coloureds’. He has helped in the creation of this race; but unlike most other white men, he elects to marry his Black woman. He begs to differ and refuses to accept the syndrome of need and shame under which many men of the colony suffer. He seeks to place himself on the side of the scientific theory of natural selection. But the matrimonial act means little to his fellow colonists; merely a shift in shame. Now he suffers the shame of a white father whose children are treated no differently from illegitimate half-castes.

Herbert reveals, though he does not state, that a colonial society works by exclusion. Effectively, it is made up of many settler factions, each with some degree of power or influence, which find unity only in defending their privileged position against the colonised. This state of affairs is recognised in the novel, though Herbert does not give an analysis of the political situation in the Territory. In 1937, the year before the novel was published, state representatives of Aboriginal Authorities met in Canberra. Each state representative gave an account of Native Affairs in his respective state. Most favoured the assimilation of the Aborigine into the wider society. This position was endorsed by the representative from the Northern Territory who in his address expressed alarm at the rapidly increasing mixed population that, growing up bitter and unfranchised, might in time take over the whole territory.

Thus, at the same time the novel was being written there was a fear in the Northern Territory that the white minority population might lose its place of dominance and be replaced by a ‘Coloured’ majority. Xavier Herbert, active in Aboriginal Affairs, would have been aware of this concern, and he addresses it in his novel. He shows us the formation of this race, but none of its political ambitions. His ‘New Race’, coming into being through natural selection and destined to succeed both black and white, is set up in opposition to ‘Fate’; and eventually ‘Fate’ wins. In his narrative, it is the ‘Coloureds’ that suffer the most and who exist in the most precarious social position. They are more victims than victors, and this may be what Herbert had in mind when raising the idea, or vision, of a superior mixed race. Politically, they have no power and no status, except in the set speeches of ‘well-meaning’ white characters. What happens to them may be seen in the case of the character Constance, who after being seduced and made pregnant by a Protector of Aborigines, Humbolt Lace, is then wedded to the Coloured Peter Pan in order to hide his need and shame. Although this might be seen as an example of natural selection, the end of the novel is symbolic of the Coloureds’ dilemma. The Giant Devil Dingo Fate rules and the crows salute him.

Herbert uses symbols and simple oppositions to structure his novel. In Chapter One, the heading ‘The Coming of the Dingoes’ underlines the then generally accepted civilisation/primitive opposition which is given in the lines:

When dingoes come to a waterhole, the ancient kangaroos, nothaving teeth or ferocity enough to defend their heritage, mustrelinquish it, or die.

This sets the theme of the coming into being of a ‘New Race’ through natural selection. Herbert is using the theory correctly though simply, and if we accept it at face value, he is not talking about Social Darwinism at all, but about natural selection in which one species succeeds another, not one society another. He is not describing the replacement of Aboriginal culture and society by the stronger British ‘civilisation’; but by a ‘new’ society emerging from the amalgamation of the two. The opposition of primitivism and civilisation engages in an ironic dialectic, and the synthesis of the dialectic is the ‘new’ race; but the potentialities of this ‘new’ race are not ‘realised’.

Herbert introduces a counter-theme in which natural selection is opposed to Fate. Fate is both antithesis and synthesis. A transcendent force which rules Black, Coloured and White. There is no escape from it and the dialectic collapses into confusion. Fate excludes any attempt at transformation, or social mediation, and stymies any movement towards resolution. What we may finally decide is that we are reading a good yarn, filled with conflict and tension, which are aspects of life and from which there is no escape. It is then that we accept the notion of a ‘universe of appalling waste’ which may only be mitigated through irony and good humour.

Incidents such as Tom O’Cannon’s death on Christmas Day, Joe Ballest’s death and Nick’s ‘seeming death’, are humorously presented so that the bitterness of Man’s Fate is lessened, though not diminished. Apart from this there is the Dickensian caricature which operates throughout the book. Names of the characters O’Crimmell, O’Theef, Paddy Pickhandle, McCrook, Nibbleson, Thumscough, Ponderosass, Shouter Rightit, Major Luffmay and so on, although enjoyable and pointing towards the great Aussie yarn with its emphasis on good humour and irony, may be felt to be too heavy-handed. But it does make for a structural opposition between seriousness and irony which adds to the complexity of the novel. I find the roots of Herbert’s style in the Aussie Yarn. In fact Capricornia might be considered ‘The Great Aussie Yarn’ in that it goes on and on like a river flowing towards the mythical inland sea, which in reality turns out to be a desert of ill-promise.

In summing up my comments on Herbert’s novel, I stress that the theme of Capricornia is the producing of a ‘new’ race from the mixture of Aboriginal and European stock. This is a product of natural selection. Against this is opposed a counter-theme of man at the mercy of Fate. Man proposes, Fate deposes. As natural selection is considered a rigid scientific principle, Fate is considered a rigid metaphysical principle. This opposition results in pessimism. The cawing of the crows at the end of the novel stresses this. By resolving his narrative in this way, Herbert has, I believe, revealed an important aspect of the Australian character. A fatalistic attitude which, instead of stressing change for the betterment, argues for stasis. Thus we have ‘accords’ and ‘consensus’ and calls for unity and conformity as against experiment in difference. It was perhaps Herbert’s knowledge of the Australian character which prevented him from giving us a more optimistic ending in which the two races in Capricornia unite to produce a ‘new’ national type. It is said that an author is only as good as his material allows him to be, and so Herbert has only been able to produce a text which reflects Australia and Australians. It is here that the value of his narrative lies and the reason it has remained a perennial best seller. Capricornia is about what makes Australians Australian.

Mudrooroo Nyoongah

May 1990

PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS (#ucc395e85-cad9-52ce-ae79-e64b7cf21d6b)

A

AINTEE, DR. Protector of Aborigines.

ANGEL. See BLACK ANGEL.

ANNA. See FAT ANNA.

B

BALLEST, JOE. Railway Ganger.

BICYCLE. Aboriginal stockman, of Red Ochre cattle station. A member of the Mullanmullak tribe.

BIGHTIT, CAESAR (“THE SHOUTER”). An eminent lawyer.

BLACK ANGEL. An Aboriginal woman, of the Mullanmullak tribe; a midwife.

BLAIZE, MRS VIOLA. Postmistress at Soda Springs.

BLEETER, REV. SIMON. A missionary.

BLOSSOM. See O’CANNON, BLOSSOM.

BOOTPOLISH. Aboriginal stockman, of Red Ochre station. A member of the Mullanmullak tribe.

BORTELLS, EDWIN. A pharmacist, friend of Norman Shillingsworth.

BOYLES, DR BIANCO. Government Medical Officer.

BURYWELL, JACK. Grazier, a purchaser of Red Ochre station.

C

CALLOW, CEDRIC. A grazier, of Agate Bar station.

CHARLIE WING SING. A Chinaman. Cousin of Blossom O’Cannon.

CHIN LING SOO. A Chinese. Father of Mrs Cho See Kee.

CHO SEE KEE. A Chinese. Storekeeper at Port Zodiac.

CHO SEE KEE, MRS. Wife of Cho See Kee.

CHO SEK CHING. A Chinese cook, brother of Cho See Kee.

CHOOK. See HENN, ALBERT.

CHRISTOBEL. An Aboriginal half-caste girl, friend of Tocky.

COCKERELL (“COCKY”). A fettler.

CON THE GREEK. Constandino Kyrozopolis, a Dago cook.

CONNIE. See DIFFER, CONSTANCE.

CROWE, JOE. Undertaker and cabman of Port Zodiac.

D

DIANA. Black quadroon girl, daughter of Yeller Jewty (q.v.).