Jane Harrison, The visitors, HarperCollins Publishing, September 2023, 304 pp., RRP $32.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781460761984
Originally written as a play, Jane Harrison has produced this novel-version of her startling and popular story that imagines seven elders from seven neighbouring clans meeting close to the bay named Kamay (later to be called Botany Bay) to spend a day discussing what they might do about the eleven ships visiting the bay in January 1788. They know by now, after more than a decade of visits along the coast, that these white men break down trees indiscriminately, that they have a weapon that makes a loud noise before killing people at a distance, that their teeth are rotten and they throw their dead bodies over the sides of their ships, fouling the waters and beaches of the coast. Are they after all harmless? What do they want? Why aren’t they back in their own country tending to their own land? Do they intend to attack? Will they go away again, as they have in the past? Should they be laughed at, pitied, or feared?
The beauty of the novel is in the depiction of the range of characters, young, old, ambitious, timid, cheeky and wise who have gathered at the bay for a day-long meeting. And more than that, the playful suggestion that these men (a gendered arrangement not much different to much of the Western world today) who are given ‘white’ names (Lawrence, Gordon, Ray, Walter) and sometimes described as wearing suits, and who struggle with meeting procedures and personality clashes, are not much different to any of us when sitting round a table trying to make sense of the world and arrive at consensus decisions.
There are many wonderful moments, such as when Walter shows them the strange tool some white men left behind in the bush on a previous visit. We witness the elders try to understand this small axe and its possible uses. Walter even suggests they could save a lot of time by cutting notches into a tree when they go up looking for honey. Then Joseph, timid and thoughtful asks, In terms of it using less time, what do we do with the extra time?
They are deeply puzzled by the way the white men put firesticks to their lips and breathe out smoke. The narrative turns on the big question of whether they will agree to attack the ships, or instead greet the visitors in their traditional manner. This would mean formally asking the visitors to pass through their land respectfully and safely.
The Visitors is a wonderfully imaginative, provocative, genial and wholly believable tale of a first encounter from the point of view of our first peoples. Readers from twelve onwards will be entertained, challenged and fascinated by this book. It would be especially wonderful and enlightening to make it the basis of whole-class discussions.
Reviewed by Kevin Brophy
