eCite Digital Repository
Rethinking Australian Country Towns
Citation
Driscoll, C and Darian-Smith, Kate and Nichols, D, Rethinking Australian Country Towns, Cultural Sustainability in Rural Communities: Rethinking Australian Country Towns, Routledge, Driscoll, C, Darian-Smith, K, and Nichols, D (ed), United Kingdom, pp. 1-14. ISBN 9781315575384 (2017) [Research Book Chapter]
Copyright Statement
Copyright 2017 selection and editorial matter, Catherine Driscoll, Kate Darian-Smith and David Nichols; individual chapters, the contributors
Official URL: https://www.routledge.com/Cultural-Sustainability-...
Abstract
The Dry is one of Australia’s fiction publishing success stories of 2016. 1 Its author, Jane Harper, set her debut crime novel in an imaginary town five hours’ drive from Melbourne. The book’s key premise is familiar in Australian fiction: a protagonist who has ‘escaped’ the clutches of a country community yet is haunted by its secrets. Harper’s central character, Aaron Falk, left the town of Kiewarra under a cloud, and on his return two decades later he is entangled in the apparent murder-suicide of a farmer facing bankruptcy. Throughout The Dry , small-town life is presented as complex, difficult and, during a time of drought when Kiewarra’s ‘huge river’ is ‘nothing more than a dusty scar . . . a cracked patchwork of rocks and crabgrass’, almost unliveable. 2 Yet even in good times, Falk reflects that country life has a ‘crushing vastness . . . enough to drown in’. 3 There are ‘too many people who know too much about each other’, and contrary to the conventional view of the generosity of country folk, ‘there’s not always a lot of help at hand’. 4 Ambivalence regarding country community aside, The Dry ’s plot conforms to established tropes representing the oppositional relationship between the Australian city and its non-metropolitan hinterland, as well as the specific place of the country town in Australian national identity and cultural production.
Item Details
Item Type: | Research Book Chapter |
---|---|
Research Division: | Built Environment and Design |
Research Group: | Architecture |
Research Field: | Architectural history, theory and criticism |
Objective Division: | Expanding Knowledge |
Objective Group: | Expanding knowledge |
Objective Field: | Expanding knowledge in history, heritage and archaeology |
UTAS Author: | Darian-Smith, Kate (Professor Kate Darian-Smith) |
ID Code: | 123266 |
Year Published: | 2017 |
Deposited By: | College Office - CALE |
Deposited On: | 2018-01-02 |
Last Modified: | 2019-11-26 |
Downloads: | 0 |
Repository Staff Only: item control page