Reading - 'Girt' and 'True Girt' by David Hunt

For some reason, apart from virtually inhaling Elly Griffiths' Dr Ruth Galloway series early on, reading, which I usually do at quite a rate - it's not uncommon for me to read 6-8 books in a week - has just not been grabbing me recently. I read a few pages then I wander off and do something else altogether.

That was until I happened to pick up a book lent me by a friend who knows of my interest in history, oh, so long ago when you could actually meet friends. This was True Girt - the Unauthorised History of Australia Volume 2 by David Hunt. Hunt has a very unusual - and irreverent - approach to history, sprinkling wry, witty commentary among the facts and had me entertained from the beginning. What he was describing was not new to me - part of my university studies back in the day included Australian history up to World War One - but the way he does it bears no resemblance to the mostly dull books and documents I had to study. You just have to look at the title to know you're in for something different. (True Girt is a reference to the Australian national anthem Advance Australia Fair, the words of which were written in 1878 and which replaced God Save the Queen only in 1984. One line of this refers Australia as girt by sea, the meaning of which, since 'girt' fell out of use over a hundred years ago, has puzzled much of the Australian population ever since.)

I enjoyed True Girt so much that I bought the first volume Girt - the Unauthorised History of Australia. It has also not disappointed. In these volumes convict history sits along side the attempts - some well meant, others less so - to 'civilise' a land with very much a will of its own and in so doing we hear the gossipy details which certainly never showed up in my studies. (Things like how Edward Gibbon Wakefield, whose tract A Letter From Sydney, the Principal Town of Australasia published in 1829 provided the governing principles used in establishing the colony of South Australia, never even visited Australia and wrote this tract when in prison for abducting a seventeen year old heiress and tricking her into marrying him. Her family took exception, had the marriage annulled and Wakefield went to prison. His first abductee was not so fortunate. She died soon after her forced marriage. Apparently abducting heiresses as a way to get funds, either by gaining control of the girl's inheritance or by being paid off with a substantial sum, was a not infrequent occurrence in Ireland at the time, too. Go figure.)

If you want a lighthearted look at Australian history this is a great place to start. We have much darkness in our country's past history and there's no way to change that but this is a way to find out some of the things we did not learn in school and which would no doubt have made the subject much more interesting if we had.