Wrecked!

“Preservation” is based on the true story of the wreck of the Sydney Cove, but Jock Serong uses it as the basis of a novel that imagines what might have happened during the survivors’ trek back to civilisation.

In 1797 the Sydney Cove was wrecked off the coast of Preservation Island in Bass Strait. All the crew made landfall on one of the Bass Strait islands, and 17 of their number then set off to reach Sydney and alert the colony of the wreck and its marooned sailors.

The seventeen were wrecked again, this time off the Gippsland coast, and so began their trek up the east coast through the unknown bush to Sydney. Of the seventeen men, only three were discovered, barely alive, some three months later, by a fishing boat just south of Sydney. What was the fate of the other fourteen – this is the basis of the book.

Preservation Island (from Google Maps)

In Serong’s version, it falls to Governor Hunter’s aide Lieutenant Joshua Grayling to investigate the story. He comes to realise that those fourteen deaths were contrived by one calculating mind and, as the full horror of the men’s journey emerges, he begins to wonder whether the ruthless killer poses a danger to his own family.

And it is this ruthless killer (one reviewer stated that “A more odious villain, could hardly be imagined”) who grips you as you read/listen to the story. I termed him a ‘diabolical psychopath’ (even checked on the correct meaning to be sure I was adequately describing him – appalling atrocious, cruel, damnable, disastrous, dreadful, fiendish, hellish, outrageous, shocking, vicious, vile – yep all of the above), yet juxtaposed against this is, that he has some of the most eloquent prose passages in the book.

Preservation Island, below Cape Barren Island and above Clarke Island

Grayling finds the survivors' accounts of the ordeal evasive, and as each character describes sections of the footslog, we are led along the journey with them.

The group is made up of the Sydney Cove’s supercargo a Scot William Clark the indulgent son of a merchant shipping family hoping to make it rich with a cargo of rum destined for the already rum-soaked colony.

Mr Figge, the opportunist, who purports to be a representative of an Indian tea merchant, who’s real underlying motive we never really discover.

Srinivas, the 14 year old Bengali lascar, now Clark's manservant, a position his father previously held.

Srinivas’ father is now the leader of the Bengali crewmen, and one of the missing fourteen Bengalis.

Apart from other minor characters – Hamilton the ship’s captain, Governor Hunter, and the alcoholic doctor Ewing, the other major player is Charlotte – wife of Lt Grayling. Obviously in love, she listens to his accounts of the survivor interrogations. Less hidebound and trusting, she asks pertinent questions and offers insightful observations.

The journey - from Preservation to Sydney

The real William Clark wrote an incomplete journal, extracts of which were published in “The Asiatic Mirror” newspaper, this provided Jock Serong with the foundation of “Preservation”. He developed the scenario that the journal didn’t record the full facts, or the motivation behind them. What were the survivors hiding, and why were they unwilling to fill in the gaps?

And like any good horror thriller story the postscript (rooted in fact) continues that sense of menace and foreboding, even after you have closed the book.

I listened to the audio version and have to admire narrator Conrad Coleby for his accents, you could always tell which protagonist he was, and for the feeling of suspense he provoked.

'Now and then' and gone

It must be time to resurrect 'Now and Then' images.
Unfortunately in the fast moving app development arena, apps come and go the National Trust's "Lost! 100 lost buildings of Melbourne" is no longer available, (I first encountered this Augment Reality app in 2012, the interactive 3D app enabled users to "ghost" - visually overlay buildings from the past onto the present, by augmenting the iPhone's existing camera function. A history, photos and stories of these often long-demolished buildings was also available), likewise the "StreetMuseum" from London.
Fortunately people have utilised the app and we can see the 'now and thens' they have created, and published in a Daily Mirror article.

This image shows Piccadilly Circus, Coronation day, June 1953. Crowds gather to witness the Coronation procession of Elizabeth II. The coronation went ahead in Westminster Abbey on 2 June 1953, and at the Queen's request, the entire ceremony was televised throughout the Commonwealth, and watched by an estimated twenty million people.

People and traffic in Oxford Street around the turn of the 20th century. Christina Broom at this time photographed London street scenes to reproduce as postcards for sale.

 

Street scene at Covent Garden with underground station and horse and cart in the background. George Davison Reid photographed activity in the marketplace from opposite Covent Garden Underground station on Long Acre. A police constable was often needed to control the congestion of the horses and carts and increasing numbers of motorised vehicles. The long established market place was under pressure to move. The congested facilities were described at the time as 'altogether inadequate to the necessities of the trade'. However, the fruit and vegetable market did not relocate until 1973.

And my personal favourite, it is the children which really elevate its impression.

The pressure to build upwards is coming from demands on the Greater London Assembly and local authorities to come up with more housing at a time of very high land prices. Pictured here is the west side of Tower Bridge showing London as it is now and back in the 19th Century

The R.R.R. Tricycle

This was a highly requested film, back in the days when film meant a 16mm film reel. 
In fact I was surprised to read that the film was created in 1981, it seemed to have a 70s look & feel to it (the book was published in 1978).

This is 'The remarkable riderless runaway tricycle' by Bruce McMillan. 

It began as a picture story in which a tricycle, whose young owner distractedly abandons it, ends up in a dump, but escapes and careens around town evading adult humans in a series of humorous hi-jinks and then returns, at last, to its downcast young owner.

Then Evergreen Productions made it into this 10 minute film. Enjoy.

3D bookshelf

Didn't realise it has been sooo long between posts.
So here is one from Twisted Sifter.

Dutch street artists Jan Is De Man and Deef Feed recently completed this amazing mural on the side of an apartment building in Utrecht, Netherlands.
According to Jan, the artists asked people in the neighbourhood to share their favourite books so they could incorporate local favs into the 3Dtrompe-l'oeil mural. The mural took about a week to paint. 

Love the way they have incorporated the windows into the work, think they look like the pamphlet boxes with the insert label frames.