The Book Show

In The Landscape of Desire Kevin Rabalais tells a story that revolves around the mysterious disappearance of Burke and Wills. The book took Rabalais four years to write and involved a move from the United States to Melbourne after he decided during a New Orleans thunderstorm that this was a novel he had to write.

Transcript

This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.

Peter Mares: Sometimes it takes an outsider to prompt us to look again at familiar things and see just how remarkable they are. This is the case for me with The Landscape of Desire, author Kevin Rabalais' take on the ill-fated Burke and Wills expedition to cross the continent from south to north. The broad outlines of the Burke and Wills saga are familiar, particularly its tragic ending when, after trekking to the Gulf of Carpentaria and back, the party returns to their base camp at Coopers Creek to find that after more than three months their support team has given up waiting and departed the site earlier that very same day.

Kevin Rabalais was born in Louisiana in the US, and when he came across the Burke and Wills story he decided he had to write about it, with the result that Kevin Rabalais moved continents and now lives in Melbourne. Kevin Rabalais, welcome to The Book Show.

Kevin Rabalais: Good morning Peter, thank you for having me.

Peter Mares: Pleasure. When did you first come across the story of Burke and Wills?

Kevin Rabalais: Four years ago in New Orleans I ducked inside a café during an afternoon thunderstorm...this is a regular occurrence in new Orleans, you can set your clock by the weather...and I'd always been interested in Australian history and particularly admire what Mark Twain had to say about the subject, he said, 'It does not read like history but like the most beautiful lies.' I was fascinated with that. So I had read a bit of Australian history but I had never come across the Burke and Wills expedition until that day, and I read a brief passage about the dig tree and the lives lost, and continued to think about it for the rest of the day. That night I went home and told my wife what I had discovered, and by the next morning we had decided that we would move to Australia. It was a story I felt I needed to write. I thought it was a novel waiting to happen.

Peter Mares: The very next morning you decide to move to Australia, having read one paragraph about Burke and Wills.

Kevin Rabalais: I began thinking about the story and realised that these stories find us and there was something that I knew I needed to do here. So we did make plans, and didn't quit our jobs that day but soon after we decided that was what we needed to do.

Peter Mares: What was it about the story? You mentioned the dig tree. The dig tree of course was the place at Coopers Creek where the support group left buried provisions for Burke and Wills on their return and left messages and the tree was marked with a burn mark. But what was it about the Burke and Wills story that made you feel you just had to write about it?

Kevin Rabalais: It's such a haunting effect, I believe, just knowing what happened to them there at the dig tree, that part of the party did return of course and within hours...they just missed Brahe's party just by hours.

Peter Mares: They missed each other twice, in fact, by hours.

Kevin Rabalais: That's right, and it was just such a sad and haunting story, and one of those unbelievable stories that I think Mark Twain is talking about, the kind of thing that if you put in a book people wouldn't believe you, that 'beautiful lie' Twain mentioned.

Peter Mares: Having come across the story, you up-end your life, move to Melbourne, and then how did you set about researching it?

Kevin Rabalais: I did a lot of reading in the beginning. I wanted to read before I saw some of these places. I think that it was important for me to realise in the beginning that these are places that no longer exist, and I think it's the same with Balzac's Paris, or Dostoyevsky's St Petersburg, I think readers hear echoes of those stories. And that's one of the exciting things about being a reader is that we pick up on those things that other visitors to Paris or St Petersburg might not, but readers of Balzac or Dostoyevsky would know this. So it was important for me to understand that the outback of the 19th century didn't exist as the way it did for Burke and Wills or for Howitt and these other figures in the novel. So I had to imagine it, I had to in some way create an emotional history and landscape that brought us to this place, a certain place where the imagination and facts meet, and I wanted to go from there and see what I could discover.

Peter Mares: So what did you read?

Kevin Rabalais: Journals in libraries...I'm remembering now, this has been a while...part of...

Peter Mares: So you went back to original sources.

Kevin Rabalais: I did go to original sources, and the National Library in Canberra has got wonderful sources. The library here in Melbourne has wonderful sources. But it was also important for me to get the research out of the way. I didn't want the research to bury the story or bury these lives. It was very important for me that these lives rose to the forefront of the story.

Peter Mares: I would say your novel Landscape of Desire confronted me with my own ignorance in the sense that I felt compelled to look up the factual history of the Burke and Wills story. As I said, the outlines were familiar to me but I found a small booklet and I looked up some biographical dictionary entries for Burke and Wills and some of the other characters like King, the sole survivor of the trip to Carpentaria, to the Gulf. So there was that side of it.

I suppose the journalist in me wanted to see where you stuck with the historical record and where you departed from it. Partly too, you don't give us the narrative on a plate. If you're not familiar with Burke and Wills, you can't just read the novel and that's the story. There a lot of characters, it's quite complicated and you move backwards and forwards in time and narrate it from several different perspectives. But I guess that key for me was...where does the history stop and the fiction begin? And was that clear to you?

Kevin Rabalais: It was clear to me. But I will say that I'm writing for an audience that I hope knows nothing about Burke and Wills because as an American, as an outsider coming to the story, someone who is discovering it as I go, part of the book is about discovering itself or the art of discovery. I send Alfred Howitt back on his rescue mission to find...

Peter Mares: He was the guy who led the search for Burke and Wills when they had failed to return.

Kevin Rabalais: So it is a book of discovery, and I think that being an outsider I'm writing also with the audience in mind of the kind of audience I would have grown up with, someone like myself who knew nothing about this story. So those discoveries that Howitt makes or that Burke and Wills make as they're progressing northward were very important for me, and I want the reader to discover that as we go. As far as the facts go, I think it's important also to begin with those facts and try to find the silent spaces. There's a certain kind of truth I think that the novelist can uncover, and I think this is why we've gone to novelists for centuries, and it's a type of story truth where the novel can give us something that we can't find in history, so we go to the novel for those reasons.

Peter Mares: It's about the human experience or about what we imagine the human experience to be rather than about the nuts and bolts of what happened in that sense.

Kevin Rabalais: Right.

Peter Mares: But you do stick to the facts in some very specific ways. For example, to the extent of Howitt who goes in search of Burke and Wills, he takes with him some carrier pigeons so he can send messages back to Melbourne and sort of report on his progress, particularly if he finds them. When he goes to set these carrier pigeons on their flight their tail feathers have deteriorated and they can't fly, so he actually plucks feathers from one bird and sticks them on another. This actually is what Howitt did. This is in your novel and it is what happened.

Kevin Rabalais: Again, one of the 'beautiful lies' of the story, I believe. Howitt did take the carrier pigeons, and I read that scene and knew that this had to be somewhere in the novel. It's actually also at the beginning of the novel. Howitt thinks he can hear the pigeons as he's travelling by train at the beginning of his journey to find what has become of the Burke and Wills expedition, and it returns at the end because there's that sense of a longing for home, a place that you know and understand because we've got these men in the desert in a place that's entirely unfamiliar. They're trying to define it but they can't.

Peter Mares: A key character in your novel is Julia Mathews, she's the young actress who enchants Burke. In fact Burke proposes marriage to her before setting out on the fateful expedition. Julia Mathews, again, was a real character, she was a star of the Melbourne stage, a very popular actor, and Burke's interest in her is recorded, but in your novel you also suggest a love interest with Wills. That bit is fiction, is it, or is there some historical record there I don't know about?

Kevin Rabalais: As far as I know, the connection was that Julia Mathews' family gave Wills' family a kid leather glove that belonged to Julia Mathews. That's the only connection I know, that's another one of those facts in the story that allowed me to go and explore what could have happened, what may have happened, trying to understand these lives and these figures. Why would Wills' family have ended up with a glove? We don't know whether Burke had a glove. I have Julia give Burke a glove, and both men end up with gloves from this figure that Burke sees one night on stage in Beechworth Victoria where he's police inspector and falls madly in love with her. As the expedition is progressing northward he's returning each night, he's leaving the party behind as they're setting up camp...

Peter Mares: He's galloping back to Melbourne to see her again.

Kevin Rabalais: ...performing on stage, he's so taken with her.

Peter Mares: Why the love interest? Why make Julia Mathews such a central character in your novel?

Kevin Rabalais: I think that I began to see Julia through Burke's eyes when he sees her on stage in Beechworth, and because I was seeing her through this mediator, in a sense, she came along and took over parts of the narrative I didn't expect for her to do. This led me in different directions, and I think that part of the writing process is organic and I wanted to see where she led me. It did lead to surprising places.

Peter Mares: Kevin, I'd invite you to read a brief segment from the book now. I'll try and set it up a bit because it's important to know which bit it is you're reading. This is from the heart of the novel, as I'd call it. The narrator at this point is William Brahe. He's been found by Alfred Howitt's search party who went out in search of Burke and Wills, and William Brahe is telling them what happened. Here he describes the mood at Coopers Creek. This is before Burke split the party and headed off to the gulf with Wills and John King and Charlie Gray. And Brahe is describing the mood at Coopers Creek after they've been there for a long time already with no action.

[reading from 'Start at the beginning...' to ...those days before the final severing.]

Peter Mares: Kevin, there are a couple of reasons I chose that particular segment for you read. One is because it describes something about the character of Burke in your novel. In the historical dictionary references to the dictionary of biography for Burke he's described as 'impulsive, quick tempered, arbitrary, generous, tender hearted and charming. Those who didn't quarrel with him loved him. He was recklessly brave, a daredevil, and had a thirst for distinction as yet unsatisfied.' That seems to describe the Burke you've written in the novel as well, I think.

Kevin Rabalais: Here we have someone who was famous for being unable to find his way home from the pub, yet he's chosen to lead the Victorian Exploring Expedition, which at the time was the best-funded expedition ever to set out across the continent. Those two things don't add up of course. He must have been a stunning figure. Physically he was a stunning figure by all accounts, and he became in a sense everyone's best friend. At the Melbourne Club I think he was a drinking buddy to many, and through connections convinced people that he could lead this expedition. He had of course been in the Austrian army, and with the constabulary in Ireland as well. Burke was from Galway, I should say. So, an incredible figure, I believe.

Peter Mares: And he'd gone off to fight in the Boer War or the Crimean War, only to arrive too late when the war was over and then come back and resume his life as a police inspector in Victoria.

Kevin Rabalais: One of the great sadnesses, I think, was he was always too late. He was too late when arriving at the dig tree as well, and it's one of those aspects of his character that makes him such a fascinating figure, the silliness of being unable to find your way home from the pub, but also that deep sadness, and the love that he clearly had for this woman who was half his age, this actress Julia Mathews.

Peter Mares: The other reason I chose that segment is because it draws upon what you described earlier as the silences, and I described it as the heart of the novel. Here is the point at which you're describing what happens to the men in the desert as their bodies begin to fall apart and their minds begin to unravel.

Kevin Rabalais: There's a jester on the expedition, a real figure named Charlie Gray, who warns of brain melt and other maladies that he's heard about. He claims they've struck with more severity in other parts of the country but we should be nervous of these things.

Peter Mares: He claims that lungs can turn to dust due to particularly hot air.

Kevin Rabalais: That's right. And of course they're all very concerned about what has happened to Leichhardt. They don't want the same outcome.

Peter Mares: Leichhardt, who disappeared in the desert and has never been found.

Kevin Rabalais: They know their predecessors and that's one of...some of the narration at least details what they know about those who have gone before.

Peter Mares: And also they're in competition, in a sense, with Stuart who was setting out from South Australia attempting to do the same thing, and Burke is aware of this, that Stuart could beat him to the prize of crossing the continent.

Kevin Rabalais: And he wants to win. There were wonderful cartoons in the Argus and other newspapers in the 19th century of Burke on a camel. Burke didn't ride a camel but of course camels were introduced for the Burke and Wills expedition.

Peter Mares: It was the first expedition to use camels.

Kevin Rabalais: I believe that's correct, yes. Members of the expedition went to retrieve camels, brought them to Australia, and now, from what I understand, you have the heartiest camels in the world here because they've gone off into the outback to survive.

Peter Mares: And there was in fact a cameleer on the expedition who came with the camels from what is probably today Afghanistan or Pakistan.

Kevin Rabalais: That is correct, yes, and those are minor characters in the book, they do come and go. Wonderful cartoons, as I was saying, of Burke and Stuart in this race, because the colonies were so excited, the thrill of being the first to reach the Gulf of Carpentaria. So it was also a national issue, it was of such importance because no one knew what was out there, no one knew what we would find.

Peter Mares: And Victoria was booming because of gold and so it was a rich colony at the time and therefore ambitious, I guess. And 15,000 people came to see off the Burke and Wills expedition when they set off from Royal Park. It was a huge event in colonial Victoria.

Kevin Rabalais: That's right. I write in the book that 15,000 people came, prostitutes set up shop, a grog shop opened behind the tress. One figure at least we know was fired, was sacked by Burke before the expedition departed because he discovered the grog shop and discovered the prostitutes. Burke knew this so he fired him in front of a group of spectators. He wants the spectators to see that he's a true leader, they will now see how a true leader behaves. So there were the 15,000 people sending these men off.

Peter Mares: And yet, as you say, it was a fabulously ill-conceived expedition as well. Burke couldn't find his way home from the pub, he leaves stores at points along the way, things like lime juice which was crucial to preventing scurvy he leaves at...I think at Balranald or Medindie or somewhere like that. He was actually a hopeless leader of the expedition.

Kevin Rabalais: One of the things I admire in my readings about William John Wills who was third in command of the expedition is that Wills was the only one in the party skilled in the art of navigation. I think Wills might have made a very interesting choice for leader of the expedition. Often the man chosen to lead the rescue party, Alfred Howitt, whose story I tell, my version of Howitt's story as I understand it, which I tell in The Landscape of Desire, Howitt going off to find the party, as Marlow's party in Conrad's Heart of Darkness is going to find Kurtz, they're not sure what they're going to discover or who they'll find when they get there because of the way the desert has treated the predecessors.

Peter Mares: And the other very important figure in the novel is John King. He went with Burke and Wills all the way to the Gulf and back, he made it back to the dig tree and he survived. The reasons he survived was the kindness of local Aborigines.

Kevin Rabalais: That's right. I always think of King as Job's servant, and there's the wonderful quote that Melville uses at the back of Moby Dick from Job, 'I alone am left to tell thee,' and here you have this sole survivor who is trying to carry this story but it's too much for him to bear, so he's struggling.

Peter Mares: And did you ever have any doubts about your ability to tell this story, especially as someone who didn't grow up in Australia? Did anyone question your right to come to Australia and tell what is a key outback legend, a key part of Australian history?

Kevin Rabalais: One question that people continue to ask is who owns stories? But I think we can't help the stories that find us. I think that the outsider has always had the opportunity to go in and describe places because he's seeing them for the first time. I think we go to poets because poets, even at age 80, are seeing things as a child would see them. There was another very interesting part of your question about...

Peter Mares: I was asking whether anyone had questioned your right to tell the story and whether you had ever questioned your ability to retell it. As you say, because the truth is stranger than fiction, this is one of those 'beautiful lies', as Mark Twain described it. Can you do justice, then, to a story like this?

Kevin Rabalais: I'm wary of any writer who goes to work with such confidence that he thinks this is the only way something can be done. I think that the work can always be better, and I think that approaching writing that way, knowing that you can always do better, there's always more...I think that's very important for a writer to keep that in mind.

Peter Mares: The other thing I note about the book is that a lot of it is written in the present tense and the narrative shifts, as we heard, your reading there from William Brahe, but we also have other people narrating the story, like Howitt, for example. That was obviously a deliberate choice, the choice of present tense as a way to tell the story.

Kevin Rabalais: I like the immediacy of the present tense which I think brings us there and it creates that emotional landscape. I'm trying to reach that history, not through period details but from the rhythms of the language, that I want to bring the reader to this place from that language rather than clothing or other details that might bring a reader in a historical novel there that way, because I don't think of this as historical fiction but more as a series of rhythms.

Peter Mares: So, more imaginative than historical, in that sense, because you're, as you say, investigating those silences, the bits we can never know what happened between those men at Coopers Creek or on the way up to the Gulf and so on, but you're imagining what may have been between them.

Kevin Rabalais: That's right. I think the enigma of the story and part of the reason the myth is so powerful is that myth can be more powerful than fact, and I think of Burke and Wills...I think of something like the John F Kennedy assassination, we know certain facts about that assassination but we'll never know the truth, and because of that it creates a lot of silent space, the silent space you mentioned, allowing the novelist to go in and try to uncover something so that we can understand a little better.

Peter Mares: And it continues to fascinate us. So have you got another Australian outback legend that you're going to tackle next?

Kevin Rabalais: I'm looking forward to getting back to reading. I think it's such an exciting life being a reader. We started with Mark Twain, I'll go back to Mark Twain, looking forward to those 'beautiful lies' of Australian history, and learning more about this country. I feel absolutely privileged to be here, it's just such a wonderful place.

Peter Mares: We look forward to future novels. Kevin Rabalais, thank you very much for joining me on The Book Show.

Kevin Rabalais: Peter, thank you for having me.

Peter Mares: It's a pleasure. Kevin Rabalais' book is called The Landscape of Desire and it's published by Scribe.

Publications

Title: The Landscape of Desire
Author: Kevin Rabalais
Publisher: Scribe
ISBN-13 9781 9212 1568 1

Presenter

Peter Mares