Nicolas Rothwell & Alison Nampitjinpa Anderson: Yilkari: A Desert Suite. (2025)
Sat, Nov 08, 2025./noise/books | LinkKindle. The tin (and cultural identity of the second author) suggested this would be about the Western Desert, i.e., the beautiful land west of Alice Springs, out past the West MacDonnell Ranges to Docker River and Warakurna, Papunya and so forth. The first story is set there, starting off at "Frontier Well" somewhere off the Gunbarrel Highway in Western Australia, and the second from Kintore, Northern Territory. But the third is in the Gulf Country, Queensland and the final one more firmly in the Pilbara, even Kimberley, Western Australia. That beginning recounts a night in Berlin when the Wall fell in 1989 which lead me to expect more of a meeting of (explicable, comprehendible) European high culture and Desert mysticism than I got.
Like The Moon of Hoa Binh (1994) there are several annoying aspects. Perhaps the worst are the flattened voices engaging in extended dialogue (really authorial-voice monologue) that each claim some distinct, esoteric knowledge that cannot be shared or at best imperfectly transmitted for reasons unspecified. I guess I was relieved that there was no pretence to scientism. Shallow/touristic takes on Aboriginal mythology/ontology are rubbished and then indulged in. The discursive Arabian Nights structure often cuts away just as things get interesting. There's an evasiveness, a contention that there is something out there for some people but probably not you, a spooky danger that I'm yet to find except when other people are nearby. Don't even think of loosening those fast suburban chains!
Another flaw is that the authors drop the names of lots of places but abidingly fail to evoke the places themselves; the ones I've been to (or near to) are unfamiliar or cursorily sketched here. There's a somewhat touching scene involving some World War II veterans returning to Corunna Downs Airfield (near Marble Bar) with the parties reminiscing about the Jupiter Well and Gary Junction Road. I'd say it's more fun to read about the actual places and history or just head out there. Stories about Len Beadell, namechecked here as he so often is, are generally great so perhaps his books are too. Aboriginal Stonehenge! Aboriginal astronomy!
One minor novelty here was the idea that the Desert ancestral spirits are ephemerally (on) the wind, in contrast to tales from Arnhem land (cf Gulpilil) which talk of eternal recurrence via waterholes.
Goodreads. Stephen Romei. (The slab quoting is smelly. It's a book made up of words.) Declan Fry: Percival Lakes, H.P. Lovecraft! I blotted that piece of cultural cringe out. Fry confuses secrecy and obfuscation (acts of commission) with Wittgensteinian ineffability, and defends the authors' inability or unwillingness to describe things that are hard to describe. Paul Daley at length. Of the land in direct opposition to Bruce Chatwin's drive-by novel. Tim Rowse: deserts are death. Understand with your ears!
All reviews are summaries, perhaps proving that engagement is not possible.
