[desertblues]

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

(...) The good thing is that at least there are people writing about the past who are prepared to face up to what was done and to acknowledge it. One of the historians doing this is Henry Reynolds
As we discussed in Things Fall Apart, it takes a lot of courage to go against the majority.(...) the title of the book refers to the Hawkesbury River of course, but also it is a quote from an anthropologist called W E H Stanner who referred to 'the secret river of blood' that was shed in the conflict between the settlers and the Aboriginals, and the silence about that shame in the way our history was taught to us. It's a powerful and chilling image.

And thanks for the images, Bookpossum. It makes this book even more alive to me.

I admire the manner in which this history is written. It makes me reflect on the way that many countries, mine included, still battle their shared past with the ex-colonies: no or little respect for the original (and colored) people, and of course little restitution or excuses. It takes a lot of courage for Australia to face the past as well as their present relations with the Aboriginal peoples.
Hard to imagine in these days that such a take over was possible and condoned by the English. That one of the oldest civilizations in the world (they came to Australia some 50,000 years ago) could be overrun by some gentry and a lot of convicted criminals.

Kate Grenville describes the conflicts of the settlers from a modern point of view. I don’t know wether one could really attribute these feelings of unease, of conflict, to the rather illiterate Thornhills, but she does a good job of making it believable.

My impressions of the parts of the book that stood out for me:
In this early 19th century colored people were viewed as less than human, so having sex with them would be an abomination, I think. Grenville describes the conflict within William Thornhill very well.

Spoiler:

P.247
'imagining the moment of telling Sal about what he had seen—even thinking the words in his own mind—filled him with shame. It was bad enough to carry the picture in his memory. Thinking the thought, saying the words, would make him the same as Smasher, as if Smasher’s mind had got into his when he saw the woman in the hut and felt that instant of temptation. He had done nothing to help her. Now the evil of it was part of him.

William Thornhill acknowledged little of the humanity of these dark skinned people, but he did know right from wrong. After the atrocities that he committed against the small community that lived nearby, he turned secretive against his own wife and in fact secretive against himself.

Spoiler:

P.286
'between the cushions of mangroves. When he came out into the open river, it felt as if a lid had been lifted. He could not get enough of the river air, stood in the bow taking lungfuls of it, clean and cool. He did not look back, to see the place where the birds circled over Darkey Creek.
He knew that he would not tell anyone what he had seen. Some of them would know already: Sagitty for one. He was the man who had talked of the green powder.
He knew he would never share with Sal the picture of this boy. That was another thing he was going to lock away in the closed room in his memory, where he could pretend it did not exist.

A believable character development for Sal Thornhill takes place when she sees the camp of the Aboriginals. In her heart she already knew they were human, but now the reality of it comes to her.

Spoiler:

P.296
'They was here, Sal said. Seeing the place had made it real to her in a way it had not been before. She turned to Thornhill. Like you and me was in London. Just the exact same way.
She shifted Mary from one hip to the other but the child kicked to be let down, and she bent to sit her on the ground, but absently, as if the child were nothing more than a parcel. You never told me, she whispered. You never said.
He flared up at the accusation not voiced. They got all the rest, he said. For their roaming gypsy ways. Look round you, Sal, they got all that.
They was here, she said again. Their grannies and their great grannies. All along. She turned to him at last and stared into his face very direct. Even got a broom to keep it clean, Will. Just like I got myself.
There was something in her voice that he had never heard before. Why ain’t they here then, he said flatly. If they reckon it’s their place. She looked away down the river, where the mangroves packed in: dense, green, secretive. Tilted her head to take[…]'

I am glad that the writer didn’t make this into a story with a happy ending, but continues and deepens on the conflict within William Thornhill.

Spoiler:

298.'He was no longer the person who thought that a little house in Swan Lane and a wherry of his own was all a man might desire. It seemed that he had become another man altogether. Eating the food of this country, drinking its water, breathing its air, had remade him, particle by particle. This sky, those cliffs, that river were no longer the means by which he might return to some other place. This was where he was: not just in body, but in soul as well.
A man’s heart was a deep pocket he might turn out and be amazed at what he found there.'

310.'How had his life funnelled down to this corner, in which he had so little choice? His life had funnelled down once before, in Newgate, into the dead-end of the condemned cell. But the thing that lay ahead of him there had been out of his hands. There was a kind of innocence in waiting for Mr Executioner.
The difference with this was that he was choosing it, of his own free will.
The noose would have ended his life, but what he was about to do would end it too. Whichever choice he made, his life would not go on as it had before. The William Thornhill who had woken up that morning would not be the same William Thornhill who went to bed tomorrow night.
He could not stop gnawing away at the thing.'

I enjoyed reading this book and will continue to reflect on it. Also I will try to read some of her other books. It seems that The secret river together with Sarah Thornhill and the Lieutenant loosely form the Colonial trilogy.