Cirrus@Austlit

The article discusses the phenomenon of the 'white blackfellow' and the changing motivations of Europeans 'going native'. It argues that, in reporting about their experiences of living among Aborigines, some writers, as for instance Marlo Morgan in her successful but fraudulent book Mutant Message Down Under, are living out their own fantasies and quests for spiritual fulfilment rather than representing the realities of contemporary Aboriginal people and life. The author also discusses the pros and cons with regard to more recent notion of 'cultural protocols' for non-indigenous writers in portraying Aboriginal life.

McLaren discusses a number of Australian novels (all recently re-issued) which have been central to developing the way in which Australians and foreigners think about white society in this continent. He distinguishes several trends and traditions in describing and characterising Australia's social and political system. Whereas Clarke and Richardson present Australia as a prison, Palmer and Waten present it as a land offering the promise of freedom. Furphy, on the other hand, is seen as a writer 'who shows us a country seeming to offer plentitude but finally withholding its promise' (54).

McLaren concludes that the 'past expressed in these fictions variously produced values of solidarity, egalitarianism, harmony with the land, but their values remain circumscribed by fear of the powerless and the dispossessed, by the arrogance of the powerful, and by distrust of the outsider. Our future will be secure only as we accept continuity with the past, enter into dialogue with the differences of the present, and accept a common responsibility towards the land that supports us' (56).