Sea-change or Atrophy? The Australian Convict Inheritance

This paper is an offshoot of a larger project which explored the possibility forthe erstwhile settler-colonizer undergoing the sea-change into settler-indigene emergentthrough a study of selected novels of Patrick White. It became apparent to me that theconvict figure, who played an ancillary role in these works, could lay claim to the statusof white indigene well ahead of the main protagonist. Robert Hughes (in The FatalShore) discredits the idea of any bonding between the convict and the Aborigine butacknowledges examples of “white blackfellas”—white men who had successfully beenadopted into Aboriginal societies. Martin Tucker’s nineteenth century work, RalphRashleigh, offers surprising testimony of a creative work which bears this out in a contextwhere Australian literature generally reflected the national amnesia with regard to theAborigine and barely accorded them human status. Grenville’s The Secret River (2005),based broadly on the history of her own ancestor, appears to support Hughes’ originalcontention but is also replete with ambivalences that work against a simple resolution.This paper will explore some of the ambivalences, the ‘food for thought’ on aspects ofthe Australian experience highlighted by these literary texts, and glances briefly also atvariations on the theme in Carey’s Jack Maggs and the The True Story of the Kelly Gang.