The landscape of Australia is a harsh place to inhabit. Blazing heat, bushfires and long isolated roads are hallmarks of this country. However, even if you live in the suburbs the natural world still finds a way to creep in.
When I was six I found a dead Brown Snake in the playground at school. I played with it all through lunch time until a teacher came over and started screaming. Brown snake venom can kill. Last year, I moved into a house that had been left empty for a few months. A Funnel-web Spider, one of Australia’s many deadly arachnids, had made its home down the plughole of the kitchen sink.
It is no shock that stories which delve into Australia’s specific brand of darkness are particularly popular. Although I am always surprised, as well as proud, that in the crime section of my local bookstore it is women who have the monopoly. Here are some of my favorites.
Elizabeth Jolley, The Well
The Well is an Australian classic. It simmers with tension between a middle-aged woman and her young ward, who live alone together on an outback station. Their obsessive relationship spins out of control when they hit something, or someone, in their truck one night in the dark. They hide the body down the old empty well on their property. Soon, the ward begins to hear the cries of a man from the darkness.
This book was written back in 1986, but I read it for the first time only recently. It’s not a long book, but it really gets under your skin. The way Jolley describes the effects of isolation on these two women is chilling.
Candice Fox, Crimson Lake
Set in the crocodile infested wetlands around Cairns, Crimson Lake delivers atmosphere in spades. The story follows Ted Conkaffey, a policeman accused but not convicted of abducting a teenager. Although he is innocent, Ted is violently condemned by everyone around him and is forced to flee north and start a new life. Pairing up with the towns outcast he becomes a private detective to make ends meet.
Candice Fox’s writing is sort of like a crocodile attack. Things go along at a serene pace, just the faintest ripple in the water, but then all of a sudden WHAM you’re in a death role of violence and terror.
Sarah Krasnostein, The Trauma Cleaner: One Woman’s Extraordinary Life In Death, Decay and Disaster
Sarah Krasnostein follows the life of an amazing Australian woman: Sandra Pankhurst. She is a trauma cleaner. She cleans the house of a hoarder who has died amongst piles of rubbish, she tidies away evidence of an accidental overdose. She also cleans up after murders and suicides, scrubbing up the blood of a man who has bled to death in his lounge room.
The book follows Sandra from the beginning, when she was born a boy in a violent and negligent home. She became a husband and father, a drag queen, a gender reassignment patient, a sex worker, a small businesswoman, a trophy wife. This is an amazing story, made extraordinary by the fact it is all true.
Charlotte Wood, The Natural Way of Things
A group of women wake up from a drugged sleep to find themselves imprisoned in a broken-down property in the Australian desert. Their heads are shaved and they forced into hard labor under the sweltering sun. The prisoners eventually learn what links them: they have all endured a sexual scandal with a powerful man. Food begins to run out and the balance of power between captor and captured begins to shift.
This novel was sort of like an Australian contemporary feminist retelling of Lord of the Flies, which is my idea of perfect.
Emma Viskic, Resurrection Bay
Resurrection Bay begins with a man holding his friend in his arms as he bleeds out through a gaping slit in his throat. The man is Caleb Zelic, a detective who has been profoundly deaf since early childhood. Set between the big city and a small coastal town, Caleb hunts for his friend’s killer. Viskic manages to create a whodunit detective story that adheres to conventions of the genre while at the same subtly subverting them. Fast-paced and gripping, I read this whole book in one sitting.
Helen Garner, Joe Cinque’s Consolation: A True Story of Death, Grief and the Law
In October 1997, a young law student decided to murder her boyfriend Joe Cinque. At a dinner party at their house, she laced his food with rohypnol and heroin. Some of the dinner guests had heard rumors of the plan, but no one warned Joe. Helen Garner followed the murder trial of Joe’s girlfriend and her best friend, probing the helplessness of the courts in the face of what we think of as “evil.”
I heard stories about this case a lot when I was growing up, as it happened not far from where I lived. Reading this book I found that the true story was even worse than the urban legend, partly because of the brutality she exposes within the mundanity of Australian life.
Cassandra Austin, All Fall Down
This unsettling Australian Gothic novel is set in a small outback town of Mululuk. The only thing connecting Mululuk to the world is a bridge, so when it mysteriously collapses the town is cut off. The novel follows teenager Rachel who has come from the city after her home life has collapsed, Father Nott the local Franciscan priest and Charlie, a charismatic alcoholic. As the community is torn apart by secrets and whipped by a storm of orange dust, primitive drives come to the fore.
I absolutely love Australian Gothic, and this book nails it.
Sarah Bailey, The Dark Lake and Into The Night
The Dark Lake begins with Detective Gemma Woodstock having an early miscarriage in the shower. Things don’t get much brighter from there. She is soon called to the murder scene of a woman she went to high school with, who is found floating in Smithson’s lake amongst a scattering of rose petals. Sarah Bailey is great at describing the claustrophobia of a rural Australian town. However, in the follow up to The Dark Lake, Into The Night, Detective Woodstock has attempted to escape the shadows of her past and moved to the city of Melbourne. As we all know, darkness can follow you anywhere. Especially in Australia.
