G. Firth Scott (–1935)

Written in 1898 as an Australian contribution to the high imperial fantasy genre pioneered by Rider Haggard, this cannot be called great literature but it is not entirely unworthy either. It is hard to know where to begin reviewing it since it mixes and matches so many sub-genres.

The best of it is a fine characterisation of the 'solid bloke', greedy and prejuduced but also hard-working and entrepreneurial, who created modern Australia. The matiness of the working man isolated in the outback show more is well drawn and convincing - the book is authentically Australian.

The worst of it is probably the utterly ridiculous central adventure involving a lost race of Lemurians, evil pygmies who are the dessicated creatures of an evil vampiric queen, a princess that is cross between Snow White and Ayesha and a cavernous mise-en-scene that is sub-Merritt.

Still, even the laughable plotting involving a bunyip (an aborigine monster), oodles of gold, the heroes living up a tree, a giantess and mesmerism is nevertheless fast-paced and (guilty pleasure!) quite a lot of fun.

Between the best and the worst is a derivative tale of reincarnation that is straight out of the world of the Mummy while the Lemurian angle is simply a rather weak use of contemporary pseudo-science to give cover to what is really a late Gothic story with a twist (no spoilers on that one).

All in all, it is worth a read, especially as Firth Scott likes to tell the tale in a rollicking down to earth manner with a bare minimum of pompous Victorian verbiage. I was also pleased to read that the racism was a little bit less sure of itself than might have been expected.

The reader will get a feel for defiant and independent-minded Australian sensibilities, still British imperial at heart, and experience an interesting attempt to translate into one Australian text a series of standard literary genres (fantasy, imperial adventure, romance, romance, the gothic). show less