'Ninety years after they were thought to have died heroically in the Great War, the stretcher-bearer Simpson and his donkey journey through country Victoria, performing minor miracles and surviving on offerings left at war memorials. They are making their twenty-ninth, and perhaps final, attempt to find the country’s famed Inland Sea.
'On the road north from Melbourne, Simpson and his weary donkey encounter a broke single mother, a suicidal Vietnam veteran, a refugee who has lost everything, an abused teenager and a deranged ex-teacher. These are society’s downtrodden, whom Simpson believes can be renewed by the healing waters of the sea.
'In Simpson Returns, Wayne Macauley sticks a pin in the balloon of our national myth. A concise satire of Australian platitudes about fairness and egalitarianism, it is timely, devastating and witheringly funny.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
Dedication: for Graham Henderson, who gave me the goad.
'Once an event escapes from living history its memories become open to confection. When these events are legends, in their loss of connection to actuality they can become vehicles for sentimentality or the mythic embodiment of values society chooses for points of self-identification. The Anzac legend is a classic example, of fortitude against the odds, against the stupid decisions of the brass, of mates standing up for mates, of the pragmatic know-how of the everyman trumping the pretensions of the nobs.' (Introduction)
'There are many ideas of difficulty and struggle in relation to writing. One that is sometimes forgotten when a writer achieves a level of prominence is the struggle involved in finding a publisher and an audience. With Wayne Macauley some of these difficulties are clearly signalled, with post-it notes helpfully attached to signposts alerting fellow travellers to the challenges faced by writers who write in ways that might be considered atypical or difficult in the industry of Australian publishing in the early twenty-first century.' (Introduction)
'Care and compassion, a fair go, freedom, honesty, trustworthiness, respect, and tolerance. These were the nine ‘Australian values’ that former Liberal Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson demanded be taught in schools, especially Islamic schools, across the nation in 2005. How? Partly through the tale of John Simpson and his donkey, Murphy. They clambered selflessly up and down Gallipoli’s Shrapnel Valley with the bodies of Anzacs on their backs like Sisyphus’s boulder, their forty days of toil ended by a sniper’s bullet. Never mind that Simpson’s real surname was Kirkpatrick; that he did the equivalent work of many nameless others; or that Simpson was an illegal Geordie immigrant who had enlisted just for the free ticket back to England. ‘The man with the donkey’ has consistently proven too useful a tool to question for war recruiters and other patriotic tub-thumpers.' (Introduction)
'He lives and yet does not live; he’s flesh and yet not. He’s John Simpson, ill-fated stretcher-bearer of Gallipoli turned national myth, and in this short novel by Wayne Macauley, he’s dredged up from the mists of time along with Murphy the donkey, who accompanies him on his endless quest to find the Inland Sea. “We follow the vast network of fissures and gullies inland,” he says, “leaning on charity where we must, paying our way where we can.” He pauses to read The Lucky Country and perform minor miracles on ordinary Australians. But Simpson and his donkey have never made it across state lines; on their last attempt (the 28th) they were beset by wasps.' (Introduction)
'He lives and yet does not live; he’s flesh and yet not. He’s John Simpson, ill-fated stretcher-bearer of Gallipoli turned national myth, and in this short novel by Wayne Macauley, he’s dredged up from the mists of time along with Murphy the donkey, who accompanies him on his endless quest to find the Inland Sea. “We follow the vast network of fissures and gullies inland,” he says, “leaning on charity where we must, paying our way where we can.” He pauses to read The Lucky Country and perform minor miracles on ordinary Australians. But Simpson and his donkey have never made it across state lines; on their last attempt (the 28th) they were beset by wasps.' (Introduction)
'Once an event escapes from living history its memories become open to confection. When these events are legends, in their loss of connection to actuality they can become vehicles for sentimentality or the mythic embodiment of values society chooses for points of self-identification. The Anzac legend is a classic example, of fortitude against the odds, against the stupid decisions of the brass, of mates standing up for mates, of the pragmatic know-how of the everyman trumping the pretensions of the nobs.' (Introduction)
'Care and compassion, a fair go, freedom, honesty, trustworthiness, respect, and tolerance. These were the nine ‘Australian values’ that former Liberal Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson demanded be taught in schools, especially Islamic schools, across the nation in 2005. How? Partly through the tale of John Simpson and his donkey, Murphy. They clambered selflessly up and down Gallipoli’s Shrapnel Valley with the bodies of Anzacs on their backs like Sisyphus’s boulder, their forty days of toil ended by a sniper’s bullet. Never mind that Simpson’s real surname was Kirkpatrick; that he did the equivalent work of many nameless others; or that Simpson was an illegal Geordie immigrant who had enlisted just for the free ticket back to England. ‘The man with the donkey’ has consistently proven too useful a tool to question for war recruiters and other patriotic tub-thumpers.' (Introduction)
'There are many ideas of difficulty and struggle in relation to writing. One that is sometimes forgotten when a writer achieves a level of prominence is the struggle involved in finding a publisher and an audience. With Wayne Macauley some of these difficulties are clearly signalled, with post-it notes helpfully attached to signposts alerting fellow travellers to the challenges faced by writers who write in ways that might be considered atypical or difficult in the industry of Australian publishing in the early twenty-first century.' (Introduction)
