Poor Fellow My Country

 I recently bought Xavier Herbert's Capricornia. This book, Poor Fellow My Country is out of print; I picked up this edition from the library yesterday. And according to GW, it is surely the least read of the major Australian novels, in no small part due to it being 1463pp long. That makes it a third longer again than War and Peace! Still, I've made a start. Sure, it's full of "grandiloquent editorials" but the description of place and person is worth the ear-bashing. And it does educate about this time in history. The British Lord Vestey of Paul Kelly's song about Vincent Lingiari (From Little Things, Big Things Grow) comes to life as Lord Alfred Vaisey in this book.

Listen to this description of the landscape: a "vast expanse of treelessness, cut into three or four paddocks, the fences of which ran so far they ended climbing into silvery uplands of mirage where a few trees grew upside down and cattle were grazing in the sky".

Magic. I want to spend some time in that landscape myself.

Also of note, we were in Buderim yesterday and I was trying to show K and DJ the deli that had grown out of the Ginger Shop. But it's now Buderim Rare Books. They stock quite a few intriguing Australian titles and I look forward to going back to find some treasures.