Why the Murray River is essential to Darry Fraser’s Australian stories
“If you are escaping your fate, you need a good place to hide.” This is why the “menacing” Murray River is central to Darry Fraser’s Australian story in her new book.
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Through drought and plenty, good times and bad, the Murray River has played a central role in Australia’s development. For novelist DARRY FRASER, it is a beloved portal to the past — and her own storytelling.
I was about eight years old.
Suddenly the Murray was in my world, a vast ribbon of water threading its way to the sea some eight hundred miles downriver, upriver another seven hundred and fifty miles or so (we hadn’t gone metric then).
I couldn’t comprehend the distance.
I don’t remember too much of my childhood up to that point, but after Dad’s promotion we landed in Swan Hill, and the river made life a whole lot more interesting.
We arrived the year the PS Oscar towed the Gem upriver from Mildura to a cutting off the Little Murray. The Gem, a lumbering, once graceful, dear old boat finally rested in her pond; a little tired, still proud, a tangible piece of river trade history. She was a conduit, a portal between the 19th century and the present, and that fired my imagination; I could see the stories, I could hear the voices.
Never much the water baby, I’d only venture into the water far enough to feel the squishy mud between my toes. I’d backpedal to sit on the banks, under the biggest, widest bluest skies I can remember.
The river, a living thing, still and silent, witness to thousands of years of indigenous custodianship and more than a hundred and thirty years of European settlement, rolled along oblivious to me. But I had a sense of place here — of my country, of being home. I remember the citrus farms and grapevines; towering dark and roiling dust storms; bridges that rattled loud under the wheels of an EJ Holden as we followed the river’s bends. I remember sometime being shown the ’56 flood highest watermark displayed on buildings round Renmark way.
So I learned the Murray was wrathful in flood, morose in drought, unforgiving in both. It’s moody, regal, and even when serene, there’s menace under the surface.
When two characters in Where The Murray River Runs appeared — one mentioned in passing, the other a best mate — another book was in the making. I needed to set their story, and most of my third Murray novel, downriver. In Renmark I found another portal to the 19th century — Olivewood Estate Homestead. Built by Charles Chaffey when he and his family settled there in Renmark after the irrigation scheme proposed by his older brothers, George and William, had failed.
The Good Woman of Renmark opens on Olivewood’s veranda.
Although a town of few inhabitants and sturdy houses at the time, Renmark still had a reasonably busy wharf. But locals were worried; there was little work on the land, rabbit populations had exploded in the drought and markets for produce were drying up.
The South Australian government had opened land for settlement along the river, so the unemployed would have work. Communal villages, as they were known, were surveyed and populated. One of them, Lyrup, close to Renmark, features in the book.
Life’s different there now but still, the river glides on by. Timeless, it heads towards a sharp bend at Morgan to go south to the sea taking flows from Channel country in the far north, from the Basin and the Snowies.
It doesn’t care about borders.
The river came before all of that and we know the problems in the Murray-Darling system are man-made. It’s my river, yours, ours, but we only have guardianship of it. Setting stories along its banks is, in my own way, keeping that responsibility forefront.
A senior citizen in Renmark once told me, “You’d have loved it back in my day. It had clear water — you could see your feet in it.”
Imagine that?
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The Good Woman of Renmark, by Darry Fraser and published by HarperCollins Australia, is available now in good bookshops and online. Historical fiction is a booming genre Down Under so let us know if it appeals.
If a more modern Australian story is your thing, check out our book of the month, Rachael John’s Just One Wish — and get it for 30 per cent off at Booktopia by using our code NCBT19.
And remember to tell us what you’re reading and check out our latest video reviews at the Sunday Book Club group on Facebook; a certain Mr Trent Dalton has been generating a bit of excitement there this week — and we’re looking forward to his next novel.