Geoffrey Dutton (1922–1998)

A soft five stars. What a find - in a small country town at a charity book stall for a mere $5! Geoffrey Dutton's book is a journey through 100 great books of Australia's first 200 years under white rule, avoiding poetry, plays, and for the most part short stories - but including anything prose-based, including history and journals.

It's a delicate five stars because a) the book is inevitably dated after 35 years, and b) no-one is going to agree with all of the options. Unfortunately, those show more 35 years mean an awful lot when it comes to multicultural and gender representative literature. At the same time, Dutton was always of the "new school of thought" and he proactively notes that about a third of the books included deal directly with Australia's Indigenous population or their history.

Nevertheless, with those caveats aside, this is sublime. Each book is given a generous discussion as well as a short excerpt and a biography of the author. Dutton reaches back to the very first settlers, examining the more moral men and women who - unfortunately - were not always heard by those in power during our country's complicated past. He restricts himself to one book per author which, although it means some tough decisions with authors like Thea Astley and Patrick White, allows him to run through a wide spectrum. Importantly, this is a luxurious read, happy to delve into all sorts of areas of the public consciousness, and it reminds me how, even as someone with a university education in literature, my knowledge of my own country's literature is average at best. A worthy find. show less

Geoffrey Dutton was a founder of the Adelaide Festival back in the 1960s and The Eye Opener is his satirical salute from the harassed 1980s to the sleepy South Australia of the 1960s.

This is the book description from the inside front jacket:

The scene is set against the backdrop of preparations for the first Adelaide Festival of Arts.

The reader first encounters Sir Lumley Lapwing in London from Adelaide in search of a Publicity and Liaison Officer for the upcoming festival. He spends an show more afternoon with his old friend, Lord Rumblebridge, lingering over an elegant and very liquid lunch. In due course Lord Rumblebridge describes to Sir Lumley the perfect man for the job — Ralph Bustard, nephew of the Earl of Appledown.

'First rate,' says Lord Rumblebridge. 'Got a DSO and DFC, Spitfires. Then he was dropped into France working for the Resistance. He's got a Croix de Guerre... Balliol man. Speaks several languages. Been everywhere...' Sir Lumley is impressed and Ralph is subsequently hired.

However, Ralph is not quite what he seems, and this is true of a number of the characters in the book.

There's more, but you get the drift.

As a founder of the festival, Dutton was poking fun at himself and Adelaide's ambitions to be the cultural capital of Australia, but still, even in 1982 when this was published, some of it is offensive in a Barry Humphries kind of way. I don't think it's Presentism to say that he, and his publisher the University of Queensland Press, should have known better than to use the 'N-word' or to make jokes about clerical abuse of schoolboys. Even in satire.

Anyway...

BEWARE: SPOILERS. (This book is long out of print and not likely ever to be reissued.)

Ralph Bustard has been head-hunted in Britain because of the cultural cringe that afflicted so many aspects of Australian life in the years before the Whitlam government(1972-75). But notwithstanding his recommendation by titled 'connections' in the UK, Ralph is a fraud. He's not Appledown's nephew, he's his son by a French-Senegalese housekeeper. He's not a 'Balliol man'; he worked in their kitchens before joining the RAF in the war. He bought his medals in a pawn shop because was only ever ground crew, and his smart clothes are courtesy of a not-really-adequate annual allowance from his father's Will. He does speak multiple languages despite an inadequate education because he picked them up when the household travelled in Africa, Egypt and Turkey.

When Ralph arrives in Australia, he's billeted with Lady Wire along with her widowed daughter Alison and three children.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2026/01/18/the-eye-opener-1982-by-geoffrey-dutton/ show less

A gem bought on the last day of our holiday in Tasmania from the Salamanca Markets in Hobart. Every secondhand bookstall there seemed over-priced and otherwise desirable volumes I left there, but this copy of Slessor was a bargain in so many ways.

I have loved Slessor's poetry since studying him in High School - an achievement when the appreciation of so much literature was strangled by over-analysis encouraged in the young and naive. I could read him forever.

To read Slessor's story was a show more revelation. I knew nothing, and was totally unaware of the pathos of his war and post war life, with his poetry dried up and his domestic life chaotic.

The book is extremely well written, its judgements judicious and its breadth wide and well informed. It was a pleasure to be guided so eloquently and knowledgeably without pretension.

The inclusion of some early pieces I didn't know, and some examples of his comic light verse, and extracts from his war dispatches is the gift of such a book. I appreciated discussion of the publications of his poems and have a few books to pursue now this one's done. show less

Eyre's story is one of mixed fortunes. In his early life a heroic explorer and traveller through some of the most desolate country in Australia, and in his later years the colonial Governor of Jamaica in the period of a brief rebellion and brutal reassertion of British control.

As a biography it is extremely well done but the subject, another relatively small player on the vast stage of the 19th Century British Empire, is likely of little interest to the modern reader. Unless of course they show more have a particular interest in Jamaican history, or of early Australian exploration.

But this is more than just a biography, it's also an examination of the relationship between colonial European Governments and settlers on the one hand, and indigenous peoples in Australasia, and former slaves in the Caribbean on the other. Dutton, through Eyre's observations, lends credence to the accounts of arbitrary justice dealt out to Aborigines on the Australian frontier, while highlighting many who deplored that behaviour, including Eyre. Curiously Eyre's accounts haven't figured largely in the recent debate in Australia on whether massacres of Aborigines took place in the 1800's - perhaps because of an apprehension about his persistent reputation as a racist homicidal despot in Jamaica

The real attraction for Dutton in writing this book was to understand how this reputation came about, and how it could be reconciled with Eyre's history as a very ordinary man, and a defender of indigenous rights in Australia. That story is essentially one that encompasses the whole system of British colonialism into which Eyre was simply swept up. Dutton's account of the clash of liberals and the old order over the proper role and exercise of colonial rule opens up fascinating vistas into British society and attitudes. In some ways the politics and the issues are still familiar to us today, as indeed are the moral dilemmas facing administrators who work for a Government involved in 'foreign adventures'.

I was a while ago prevailed upon to donate my (unread) copy of this book to the very worthy Eyre Bird Observatory, an incredibly isolated stop on one of Eyre's epic journeys of exploration. After reading this book I've come to appreciate it's considerable virtues, and have ordered a second copy to donate - but don't begrudge the cost at all. Highly recommended, and I hope if you ever visit the observatory you'll find a copy there. show less