On the 250th anniversary of Cook’s landing in Australia, the intoxication with writing about Captain James Cook shows little sign of subsiding. On a Barbarous Coast by Craig Cormick and Harold Ludwick joins a slew of fiction that attempts to re-story Captain Cooks landing on the coast of Australia.
On a Barbarous Coast poses an imaginary conundrum of what would have happened if after leaving Botany Bay, the Endeavour had wrecked on a coral reef off the far north coast of Australia. Escaping the wreck is a small band of shipwreck survivors, including a comatose Captain James Cook, together they must then survive the unknown dangers of this foreign land and each other as survival strips away the last illusions of civility and order.
As the mythology surrounding colonialism is stripped away, it is near impossible for any writer to not include the indigenous perspective in any arrival story. Within the writing and academic communities there is an awareness of allowing First Nation’s People to speak for themselves and tell their own stories. It seems that this was the reason for the co-authorship between Craig Cormick and Harold Ludwick.
Craig Cormick is an accomplished writer and academic. Harold Ludwick is a Bulgun Warra man who identifies with the Black Cockatoo group and works for the National Museum of Australia. In relation to On a Barbarous Coast, Ludwick lends his knowledge of country and language to give the story a strong sense of place and context through the eyes of both the character Garrgiill, a young boy of wandaar (white cockatoo) group and Gandhaarr the crocodile that lives in the river.
The central narrative is told through the recollection of the protagonist Magra, a midshipman from the Endeavour. Magra is modelled after James Mario Magra, who is believed to be the author of A Journal of a Voyage Around the World in His Majesty’s Ship Endeavour published in 1771. Thinly dispersed throughout the book are chapters narrated by Garrgiill, seemingly with the vision of creating balance in the narrative. This is not the result due to the dominance of the central narrative of the shipwreck survivors and the overarching presence of Cook. The failure to create fully rounded characters from the Bama and the amount of page real estate awarded them, causes the bama to remain two dimensional place holders for what could have been a more nuanced contrast between the white cockatoo group and the aliens on their shore.
The book is very easy to read. Cormick’s style is simple, journalistic and undecorated and moves the story forward at a steady pace. Ludwick’s educational style is rather like a guidebook of Guugu Yimidhirr words and cultural practices which is, while interesting, unable to match the status of the shipwreck survivors. The impact of projecting an unpolished imagining onto the survivors and position of those men into a situation that humanises was an ambitious project. It was thought-provoking observing the subtle evolution of the group dynamics when placed in an unfamiliar landscape. How swiftly and completely civilities so prized by the white Europeans slip away when their survival is tenuous.
On a Barbarous Coast is an easy read that questions the legitimacy of Captain Cook’s myth through changing the ending to one that doesn’t destroy the Aboriginal population, but depends upon them for their very survival. But, whilst this was an interesting diversion that uses its fictional narrative to shift the scale to one where the Indigenous population is on top, as real life stakes are so high for First Nation’s People in Australia my tolerance for reading accounts of Captain Cook, even fictional ones, is non-existent particularly where I feel the white story is still being prioritised over the Indigenous one.
Christina Donoghue – On The Page
