Image in the Clay

This is the first ever published work by the truly underappreciated Australian literary great, David Ireland. This is a play. Both the original producer and David Ireland himself write a preface in my very battered edition. The producer mostly covers the trials and tribulations of starting the play but Ireland's is by far the most interesting in that he explains his writings. I found him articulating what it is that I have always enjoyed and admired about his novels. On this play he writes “No opinions are presented: my interest in aborigines is no more than anyone else's, except that they are people. That is my interest” Considering at this point in time I have read 8 of his novels and now this play, I am of the opinion that that sentence has summed up all his writings so far. For example if that statement he has made had one word, ‘aborigines' changed to any of the following:- ‘workers' ‘drunks' ‘women' ‘red setters' whatever; his novels will not have changed one iota in that he is an observer of people and has written about them in his then surroundings.
The Unknown Industrial Prisoner for example, is everything I personally have observed in my working life in manufacturing. Ireland was able to work in an oil refinery and observe his fellow workers in his own surroundings.

With that this play and the novel that it consequently led to, Burn, are not written in a manner that I have become used to with Ireland. There has been a sense of ‘knife to the heart' REALISM in both the play and Burn. All other novels are written with short sharp chapters that made it all read very fragmented, sometimes surreal and almost modernist. This play and the novel Burn are far from that. They are brutally realistic and view the issues with indigenous life with brutality in a way that I find very disconcerting. There are no role models. Gunner, the main character, is not interested in life outside his own plot of dirt. His entire family are dragged along with that to a degree. The play is explicitly hard edged in its observation of indigenous camp life. Considering that Ireland had worked cutting timber in the late 1940' his comment above is striking. He makes no opinion, this is all observation because they are and were the people that he had an interest in while in his surroundings along the Murrumbidgee River. It was all about the individual as dirt, images in the clay.

With that comes one of the most poignant moments of the play. The youngest son has returned from the city. His name is Gordon and he returns with gifts for all, a few beers, a pipe for the old man, a dress for his mum. After a while the truth comes out. He was never a big shot in the city but just another no one. And with that a Black no one. “They looked at me and they didn't see a better suntan then they had” “What they saw was dirt” He caught that questioning look as to why didn't he wash. He did, scrubbing himself to soreness. He changed jobs in hope of conforming “but that made no difference... if only I could sing” “They think I am straight from the dead heart of the country” when he was far from that. Gordon explains to his family that he cannot throw a boomerang, has never been to a corrobboree nor seen a didgeridoo. But white man thinks he is “primitive” and should be kept away from the women and kids. “I'll tell you where the dead heart of Australia is! It's right back there in the city” BAM! This is still relevant to today's Australia. An urban society that promotes itself as anything but. Images in the clay!

I read Burn, the novel that morphed from this play and consider it superb. My review here. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1700744060?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1

Why Irelands play and novel on indigenous Australia has disappeared into obscurity is a tragedy, but then tragedy are both the play and the novel if the truth be told.