“A bunch of workmen were lying on the grass of the park beside Macquarie Street, in the dinner hour…”
Even with my predilection for things Australian, I’d never read DH Lawrence’s
Kangaroo. That is until my English teacher from school half a century ago, Gordon Braddy, recently recommended I give it a go.
Not the most taut (or taught) of Lawrence’s work – he never seems to have got around to editing it – I loved it. Rich in observation of 1920s New South Wales, and in particular a somewhat bonkers far-right clique he encountered there, it has swiftly become my favourite Australian novel.
So, on our recent visit, we went in search of the house where Lawrence lived and wrote much of the novel – in Thirroul, a small town on the coast south of Sydney.
I stopped and asked a woman in a pharmacy there if she knew where the house might be? “Why, yes,” she said, and gave me precise directions. “Does everyone in Thirroul know where it is?” I enquired. “No,” she smiled, “but I do.”
Craig Street is a quiet road leading up to the ocean, lined with recently built bungalows, amongst which is just one remaining example from the pre-war period - Lawrence’s “Wyewurk”. It looks as though it’s virtually untouched.
"There it crouched, with its long windows and its wide verandah and its various slopes of low, red-tiled roofs. Perfect! Perfect! The sun had gone down behind the great front of black mountain wall which she could still see over the hedge. The house inside was dark, with its deep verandahs like dark eyelids half closed. Somebody switched on a light. Long cottage windows, and a white ceiling with narrow dark beams... How the sea thundered!" (
Kangaroo, chapter 5)
Completely unmarked and unsuspected. Exciting to find.
Neville Wran was premier of New South Wales in Australia in the 1980s. A canny old bird. His newly-elected political opponent, the glamorous young Nick Greiner, was doing brilliantly in the polls.
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