Fetch The Roving Party Executed By Rohan Wilson Distributed As Publication

Rohan Wilson has written an impressive historical novel that has left me considering it as good a debut that I have ever read,

The main character is a Vandemonian born indigenous man called Black Bill, Bill is beholden to John Batman to assist in the hunting down of plangermaireener clansmen and women as part of the Black Wars that were part of the sad history of Van Diemens Land.
Along with a crew of convicts looking for their passs to freedom and Aboriginal trackers from the mainland Wilson writes a tale of both brutality and beauty about this Roving Party intent on genocide and the rewards that would go with the capture of some of the clans people.


The book is many themed, Mans inhumanity to his fellow man looms large, Also covered is the deep spiritual aspect of knowing the value of the land that one is part of be that as an individual or through a clan.
Black Bill for example never says what is on his mind in being part of the Roving Party with its murderous intents but as the reader I always got the impression he was torn between the old world and the new.
The brutality of some of the events is written in such a way as to leave nothing to the imagination, This is countered with beautiful descriptions of the starkness of the country side and the extremely inclement weather that the protagonists encounter on their journey, The seamlessness of the telling of the story and the description of the land was fantastic,

I was immersed from page one to the very end and recommend The Roving Party to anyone with any interest in the subject of Van Diemens Land be that fact or fiction.
It's now been a couple of weeks since I finished The Roving Party, which is a good thing for a review because now I know whether it sticks with me or not.
It does. The thing that sticks with me most is this: mina, nina. narapa. Googling tells me they are palawa kani words for 'me', 'you', and 'to know' or 'to understand', palawa kani is the piecedtogether language of indigenous Tasmanians, But in the book, they words arrive without explanation, They are a locked door, and a reminder of our failure to understand each other,

The Tasmanian characters are similarly opaque, Sometimes it works often I wanted to know more, Why are these characters doing what they do What do they feel Perhaps there can't be an answer, As a theory for the atrocities committed during Tasmania's Black War, it feels compelling,

For a bleak, brutal and often cold book The Roving Party is surprisingly beautiful, There's a lovely rhythm and repetition in the The Roving Party's landscape, and even moments of humour, There's a possibly supernatural subplot running underneath, which is cool but feels a bit odd in an otherwise relentlessly realistic novel, As is frequently necessitated by my bicoastal existence, the driving up and down through the Midlands of my island is a constant, I recently made the journey yet again after reading Wilsons award winning book, As is always the case, part of said journey is flanked by the slopes of Ben Lomond, rising bulllike from its range, this time on a sparklingly crisp spring morning.
Unusually for the time of year, there was no circumference of frosting to temper its bluegreen stance, It is a majestic mountain within Tasmanias context, but Id always figured it to be benign,
In this authors mind though it is an even more substantial presence and is the fulcrum around which his story plays out, On one side we have Batman, the dour, hard organiser of the hunting party, On the other is his quarry, members of the gloriously named Plindermairhemener clan, ably led by its headman Manalargena, Here we have a resistance leader to rank with Mosquito of earlier decades, or even Pemulwuy on the Hawkesbury Plain as well as Kimberley warrior Jandamarra, We know from history that his courage will be no match for the fowling pieces of the government sponsored bounty hunters, This is the time of the Black Wars, Tasmanias ultimate stain, leading to the demise of a people in their traditional form, This is a dark, dank cruel book, but one stunningly written, A new and capable member has, with this tome, introduced himself

to the excellent coterie of this southern states eminent writers, and will soon press for their mantle if this standard of product continues to be repeated.

The novel evokes frontier Tasmania, a time of no quarter given by either side and of harsh practices that are, even by todays desensitized standards, stark and horrible.
Wilson does not shy away from this, but the book also includes black humour and some nuances of hope, The character of Black Bill is the most fascinating creation, and the ultimate hero may surprise some,
The novel has led me to read some internet on Batman and there is some interesting stuff out in the ether, some laudatory, but some as well backing up Wilsons view of Melbournes founder.
It has also in part led me to purchase James Boyces, dealing with his time after these events, This also promises to throw some light on the icons darker side,
As a Vogel winner one would expect this to be a novel of quality written by an author with potential, Some former winners have fallen by the wayside, but Wilson, I suspect, has the chops to make a go of it in these difficult times for our literary people.
My island truly punches above its size in quality output for discerning readers, But with the place Im privileged to live, theres plenty of fodder in its sour, tainted past,
Ugh. Yes I expected this book to be a difficult read due to the subject but it was just a difficult read, I like the fact the author used Indigenous language but a glossary would have been helpful, As the author was Tasmanian born he should know breadfruit does not grow there!! Its the little details that count, And the ending just wandered off with no conclusion, This is possibly my favourite book ever, Reasons why:
The lyrical, poetic descriptions of the Tasmanian bush are evocative and miserable at the same time, As a Tasmanian born person, the descriptions are as accurate as they are captivating,
The way First Nations people are represented, as warriors and heroes and complex individuals, all fully imagined characters, Even inwhen this novel was published, most novels were depicting indigenous Australians in stereotypical ways, Black Bill is caught between two cultures one of the first First Nations people to find himself in this way, He is smart and kind, vindictive and violent and mysterious there are more questions than answers, and this is considerably satisfying,
I love the use of Language and the way the author's research of First Nations people is effortlessly woven into the story,
This is a dark, tragic and pivotal chapter in Tasmanian history, The Black Way was a significant era when one way of life ended, and another was beginning, Manalargena's warriors have their ambitions and desires as do the convicts in Batman's roving party,
The plot is riveting, It's a fictionalised account of real history every event in the novel actually happened, The hunting party becomes the hunted this brutal chase culminated in a last stand, not unlike an Amercian western,
Most of all, what I admire in this novel is the originality, There is no other novel to compare this one to, Maybe Thomas Hardy if he wrote a novel set in a wild remote bush landscape and featured criminals and indigenous people, You could compare it to Cormac McCarty's brilliant The Road, but this runs deeper and is more emotionally compelling, I think it is amazing,
I normally steer well clear of any selfconsciously 'Australian' awardwinners set in the colonial bush this won Wilson the Vogel Prize, but when I flicked through the first few pages of this in the shop, the writing immediately intrigued me.
It feels urgent and modern in a way that belies itssetting: terse dialogue with an ear for colloquial rhythms, and descriptions that are viscerally poetic sometimes, literally so.


But there's also a mystical quality to this that reminded me of Cormac McCarthy, Perhaps it's all the laconic men with their guns and merciless killing, but it's also the weird, unresolved tone of the ending and the role of stories and allusive imagery.
One of the most McCarthyesque scenes occurs when the roving party meet a stranded toff with a mysterious fancy case, who pitifully begs to be escorted to safety.
John Batman looks inside the case, but never tells the party what it contains and we never find out either,

The clan chief Manalargena, an ambiguous antagonist who seems to have magical powers, tells Black Bill an equally ambiguous protagonist a story about two brothers eating crayfish by a river, pursued by a hunter who wants the crayfish for himself, until all three are transformed into wallabies or, in the version Black Bill remembers, snakes and graze together peacefully, forgetting who is friend and who is foe.


This story seems to be an allegory of the frontier war that was then being fought between black and white people in what's now Tasmania.
Manalargena wants Black Bill to join him in fighting off the whitefellas, who only want what someone else already possesses, And he implies that, like the wallabies, Black Bill has spent so long around the colonists that he has forgotten whose side he's on,

But the story could equally be utopian: a vision of a Tasmania shared peacefully by black and white people, Wilson explores the arbitrary lines of belonging and notbelonging in Van Diemen's Land: the clashing allegiances one could find oneself wrongsided by, It's telling that Manalargena is described as a Plindermairhemener man, but Black Bill is a Vandemonian: he belongs to this place, but having been raised from childhood by a white settler, he's native in a 'white' way.


We see this cycle being repeated as John Batman another ambiguous antagonist, who'd go on to claim what's now Melbourne for the white men steals a Plindermairhemener boy to raise in his household, calling him Ben.
And when Eliza Batman enlists the help of Black Bill's wife, Katherine, in finding out the name of a black girl Batman has kidnapped and whom Eliza is now trying to 'civilise' by bathing her and dressing her in European clothing Katherine's mouth goes hard and she says, "Whites got no need of our names.
"

Also unwillingly becoming Vandemonian are the four convicts who are loaned out on assignment to Batman an officially condoned use of convicts as slave labour for free landowners.
Three are English, one is Welsh, but as Batman informs them, they're all Vandemonian now, And joining Batman, his servant Gould, Black Bill and the convicts in the titular roving party are two Dharug men from Parramatta, Pigeon and Crook, By virtue of their skin colour and their bushcraft skills they're lumped in with the local blackfellas, but this isn't their language or their country,

So much of the book is the oppressive suffering of this oddball group as they set out to earn money, land or their freedom by murdering and enslaving the local clanspeople.
The cold, rain and snow, the hunger and thirst, the leeches and rocks and branches, the brutality and lack of compassion, are all described vividly, Theirs isn't a journey with a clear trajectory they do rove, searching and never quite finding their quarry, and erupting into vicious, deadly skirmishes here and there.


Black Bill's urgent desire to find and kill Manalargena is what really drives the book, Like so much here, the nature of their feud is unspoken although Bill's collusion with Batman to exterminate his own people is viewed with justifiable disgust by the clansmen.
In a way, it seems that Manalargena represents Bill's shame over what he's done, and his alienation from his language and traditions, He's an opaque, stoic character who nonetheless feels deeply, Bill seems dispassionate, even callous, in his work, yet he displays a compassion that seems innate, He repeatedly rescues Horsehead, one of the convicts, a disagreeable man who could easily have been left to die,

Later, he rescues a black girl from the clutches of two escaped convicts, and feeds and shelters her, Children seem to act here as both as emblems of what has been lost, and hope for the future, The white urchins the party encounter in the towns are crueller and more horrible than the adults, Manalargena constantly surrounds himself with children, And Bill's unborn son is his only source of solace,

I was reading about John Batman on Wikipedia just now and learned that his direct descendant Daniel Batman, an athlete who died in acar crash, was married to athleteturnedpolitician Nova Peris and fathered two children with her.
Jack Batman, whose ancestor murdered black people, is Aboriginal, .