The Secret River and Terra Nullius are novels which both reflect on the consequences of European colonisation in Australian Indigenous history. Kate Grenville, author of The Secret River, is an Australian woman who was inspired to compose a novel about Australia’s past due to her European ancestral history during colonisation. Likewise, Claire G. Coleman, author of Terra Nullius, is an Australian woman also motivated to compose a novel due to her ancestral history. Coleman, however, identifies with the South Coast Noongar people, presenting an alternative indigenous perspective. Stylistic features such as personification, similes, metaphors, allegories, and symbolism are evident throughout both texts, allowing readers to interpret events and sympathise with characters. By utilising character perspectives, both texts reveal deeper motives behind the violent culture involved in colonisation, in different unique ways which readers can relate to?.
Coleman begins Terra Nullius with third person omniscient narration, following a young ‘Native’ male character named Jacky, fleeing a mission run by a cruel nun. “It (the sun) was the glow of pain, the glow of the end of the world. It was not a friendly colour for the sky to be.” This metaphor followed by personification vividly describes the unforgiving landscape that Jacky escapes into. Jacky is challenged to evading trackers, troopers, local militia and native police who all seek his extermination. The intensity of this task is made compelling to readers using alliteration, simulating the sound of his beating heart; “The heave of his breath, the hammering of his heart…”. Coleman structures the opening chapters of Terra Nullius with little happening beyond this unrelenting and exhausting repetitive pace of Jacky’s run-eat-hide triad. This concept, introduced by the frequent repetition of “Jacky was running” in the opening paragraph, allows readers to engage in Coleman’s compelling colonial world-building, and the slow and necessary reflection on colonisation and its impacts.
Similarly, Grenville opens The Secret River with third person omniscient narration. In contrast, this novel begins with a prologue explicitly introducing the protagonist, a European convict named William Thornhill. The fourth line of the novel reads “William Thornhill, transported for the term of his natural life in the Year of Our Lord eighteen hundred and six, was passing his first night in His Majesty’s penal colony of New South Wales”. Unlike the opening chapters of Terra Nullius, this early example introduces the main character, events, year and location, allowing readers to quickly position themselves in the storyline. Grenville employs personification “Trees stood tall over him” and simile is this a metaphor?“He was nothing more than a flea on the side of some enormous quiet creature” to describe Thornhills fear and feelings of worthlessness in the situation he is placed in, provoking sympathy amongst readers. Grenville continues to provoke sympathy for Thornhill using similes which modern readers can relate to. Thornhill thinks the place is “like death” and “a sharp stab like a splinter under a nail: the pain of loss”. Hence, whilst the beginnings of Terra Nullius and The Secret River both explore the consequences of European colonisation, the narration styles differ. The opening chapters of Terra Nullius lack context, allowing a slow reflection on colonisation and its impacts, whilst the prologue of The Secret River is crammed with descriptive language and information to clearly set the scene and provide a clear frame of reference for the novel.
Grenville is clear and concise in her introduction of timeline, whilst Coleman is almost aloof in her introduction of details of a colonising force. Early in the prologue of The Secret River, Thornhill is described as a convict being transported from London to New South Wales in 1806 to help settle the land, a well-known concept of Australian history. If the reader knows anything about Australia’s Settlement History, they can be assured that The Secret River is set post Australian colonisation. Comparatively, early in Terra Nullius, Coleman includes occasional mentions of the ‘greyfella’ by ‘natives’. Coleman portrays the ‘greyfella’ to have a perpetual drive for moisture, which leads the dry continent to resist them, much like it deprived early, thirsty European colonists. The term ‘greyfella’ is therefore used to symbolise European colonists. The reader is positioned to assume the novel is set in the Australian colonial frontier post 1788. The early chapters which deliberately lack context are where Coleman makes the most of the potential allegory of Terra Nullius for the Australian colonial frontier that readers are familiar with. Coleman later begins to touch on and intertwine new and old threads of misery, vindictiveness and brutality. The ‘Natives’ “had heard of them Settlers. People had come into our Country running from them, they told us about the Settlers”. Other examples include simply employing subtle 21st century expressions which seem anachronistic for the colonial period, such as mentioning the importance of being a “people-person”. This produces uncertainty on the timeline Coleman is trying to establish.
Clear indication of differing introductions between the two texts can be exemplified in the first sentence of The Secret River’s Chapter 1, reading “In the rooms where William Thornhill grew up, in the last decades of the eighteenth century…”, soon followed by “a year and a half later; in 1777”. By employing these statements, Grenville clearly explains that the storyline has jumped back before the historical initial invasion and colonisation of Australia in 1788. Readers are clearly informed of the timeline to make it clear that the novel will follow Thornhills life from a child to a husband and father of four. Along the way, readers can reflect on the poverty of London and its impacts on the culture of Australian colonisation. Contrastingly, Coleman introduces Terra Nullius with low clarity to make readers think more about what is occurring. By doing so, readers pick up on Coleman’s subtle references to current modern Australian culture. Half way through the novel, unaware readers quickly discover the previous deceitfulness of the timeline when a historical document is quoted to “Herald Sun, 21st September 2041”. Hence, readers are obliged to make links between past social, historical and political events of European colonisation in Australian history to understand how they influence contemporary Australian culture in Coleman’s dystopian story.
In Terra Nullius, there is a clear cultural divide between the ‘Settlers’ and ‘Natives’. In general, there is a perception that violence or murder towards a Native is somehow acceptable. This contrasts views about violence towards Indigenous people in The Secret River. There is of course still the acceptance, almost glorification of violence or murder of Indigenous people, but it also comes with the reluctance to accept this – almost empathy for indigenous people who are subjected to such violence. Thornhills perspective is largely shaped by the somewhat extreme conflicting views of characters named Blackwood and Smasher. Blackwood is a respectful character, frequently repeating his “take a little, give a little” principal. Blackwood interestingly keeps his opinions closer to himself, suggesting that his views were unpopular or unorthodox for the time. The circulating stories told by Smasher and alike characters are a key contributor to the common settler conception, crafting a simplistic depiction of violent, unpredictable people who are out to harm. In The Secret River Grenville explores the violence involved in colonisation through Thornhill’s perspective only, which is heavily influenced by other characters actions. Contrastingly, in Terra Nullius Coleman tracks the lives of various characters from both groups’ perspectives. Along with Jacky, Coleman also presents the intellect of other characters including: Esperance; who leads a camp of natives to keep one step ahead of the encroaching settler society, Sergeant Rohan; a trooper tracking Jacky down, Sister Bagra; the “murderous and inhumane” head of the missionary school where Jacky was raised, a sadist genocidal colonial administrator known only as the ‘Devil’, along with additional nameless ‘Settler’ and ‘Native’ characters. The stark differences in point-of-view and depth of characterisation between Terra Nullius and The Secret River allows each novel to explore the past culture surrounding Australian colonisation in their own unique and insightful ways.
Fear of the unknown drives violence in both texts. Terra Nullius and The Secret River both involve violent massacre scenes. Interestingly, they are told from similar ‘settler’ perspectives. In The Secret River, Thornhill wants peace with the Aboriginal people however the language barrier, and his ‘superior’ English culture are his primary obstacles. The stories that Smasher circulates about the viciousness of the Aborigines fills Thornhill and his family with fear and paranoia. The passage for the massacre in Terra Nullius begins with troopers searching for a fugitive, a murderer who had killed a settler. The troopers “were silent, although they were nervous; they had all heard stories of the sneaky Natives and their tricks”. This indicates that by circulating stories, the settlers craft a similar depiction of Aboriginal people to The Secret River, clearly also filling the environment with fear and paranoia. Coleman’s use of gruesome descriptive language during the massacre in Terra Nullius indicates to the reader that it is told from the perspective of a settler who finds the penchant for violence against the Aborigines sickening, however succumbs to violence to protect themselves, much like Thornhill does.
In Terra Nullius, Coleman utilises similes to illustrate the scenes from a revolted perspective “he saw a Native – a child, stomach opened like a hunters prize, like a corpse on an autopsy table, like a gutted fish, like a pig slaughtered for meat”. This quote can be directly compared to Grenville’s gruesome repetitive illustrations of actions such as a woman “pushing the limbs of a baby under the possum-skin rug but [he] got her by the hair, yanked back her hair, and sliced across her neck as if she were one of his hogs”. These exemplar quotes from Terra Nullius and The Secret River correspondingly spark indications that both characters realise an inevitable consequence of the violence will be losing part of their humanity. Verification of this in the Secret River is Thornhills realisation of their humane similarities with “the shape of his (indigenous boy) skull, the same as his own” and their “same coloured blood”. The perspectives of both Thornhill in The Secret River and the trooper in Terra Nullius are utilised when describing the massacre to remind the reader that violence towards the natives stems from a desire to maintain a sense of safety and control.
Terra Nullius and The Secret River reflect on the consequences of Australia’s colonising past, provoking sympathy amongst readers through similar literary techniques. Authors demonstrate diverse perspectives and writing styles particularly in how they choose to open each novel and introduce the timeline. Interestingly, despite Coleman exploring many perspectives throughout the novel, The Secret River and Terra Nullius both present the key massacre passages from the perspective of similar characters. Through similar in their perspectives, both authors reveal the primary drive behind the consequence of violence in European colonisation; fear, an ageless concept thereby resonating with readers today.