Madelaine Dickie

Madelaine Dickie is the West Australian author of the award-winning Troppo, which I read last year. Red Can Origami is her second novel, set closer to home in the fictional Kimberley town of Gubinge (actually an Indigenous name for the latest superfood, the Kakadu Plum). Written on Balangarra country in the Kimberley and at Youkobo Art Space in Tokyo, it's an ambitious novel, tackling the contentious issue of uranium mining on traditional lands, and pulling no punches when it comes to depicting the complexity of the situation.

The novel is narrated by Ava Kelly, an adventurous journalist from Melbourne who falls in love with the remote country and its way of life. I didn't like the choice of a second-person narration, I never do because I find it jarring. However its use to address the reader has both a confessional aspect, when Ava questions her own behaviour, and also the effect of universalising the experience, as if the reader is also complicit in whatever is going on.

From the safety of the office it seemed kind of crazy, the idea that country can 'watch'. But out here...
Maybe you shouldn't be here.
Maybe it's time to go back.
Nah, you're keen to find a pool clear and croc-free for a dip. So you follow the creek's curve up through stone, climbing waterfalls, until finally you come across a cave. (p.12)

As it turns out, Ava is not the only person who has transgressed in this sacred place.

Before long, Ava is fed up with the lazy attitude of her editor, and she is embarrassed when her text is altered to make an Indigenous tragedy into tabloid fodder. She's previously spent time in Japan and is fluent in the language, so when the Japanese businessman Watanabe offers her the opportunity to work for the Gerro Blue mining company as a liaison officer, she takes it. She wants to get ahead financially and the chance to work with Noah, the Indigenous Burrika man she fancies, is a bonus. But working for 'the dark side' entails all kinds of ethical dilemmas. She justifies it to herself and others by pointing out that if she didn't take the job, someone else would. However as the plot progresses, the ethical dilemmas she faces become more and more disconcerting when she finds she has to juggle severe penalties for breaching confidentiality against public safety.

Dickie shows that there are multiple perspectives at play when decisions like this one have to be made. I'm not familiar with the complexities of native title and traditional ownership in different states of Australia, but in this novel, the traditional owners can negotiate terms of access to their land but not veto mineral exploration. (See explanation on my blog). But in Gubinge, rival Indigenous groups are competing for the right to negotiate; and some are in favour of job creation while others don't want their sacred places touched. The Gubinge Greens and their out-of-town supporters think that the land (though inhabited by Indigenous people) should be protected as 'pristine' wilderness; and the townsfolk don't think it's fair that Indigenous people can make a decision that, in the case of uranium mining, could affect the safety of them all. The Japanese company wants a profitable venture at the lowest cost; and is keen to suppress the damage they have caused with premature exploratory work. And the government in far away Perth of course wants to encourage investment. As you'd expect in a small place, things get personal.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2020/01/19/red-can-origami-by-madelaine-dickie/… (mais)

Troppo is going to be on the 2020 reading list for the Indonesian book group I belong to, and it's a good choice for discussion because it's the story of a young Australian woman who goes to work in Sumatra, offering the perspective of an Australian who is fluent in Indonesian and knows the country quite well. Like Simone Lazaroo (who won the award in 1993), Dickie writes as an outsider with some inside experience of Indonesia. Most of the people in our group have a great deal of inside experience of Indonesia, so I'm looking forward to hearing what they think of the novel.

Penny, the central character and narrator of the story, is her own worst enemy. The book begins with an alarming incident where she hears first-hand from a young woman who had worked for her future boss, Shane, but she decides to ignore those warning signs. Penny is a keen surfer, telling herself that she's in Sumatra to manage a coastal resort for a few months so that she can surf in her time off, but really, she's running away. She's evading the problems she is having in her Australian relationship with a man called Josh. Some years older than her, he is everything she is not: prudent, sensible, and comfortable with routines. He's career-minded, and settled-down contentedly in Perth. But Penny, perhaps because of her disrupted youth which included time out with her father on Bali for a year, likes to party, to drift, and to have an adventurous lifestyle. Reckless and naïve, Penny is warned off working for Shane by both expats and the locals with whom she is staying, but she ignores the weight of all this hostility and takes up her job at the resort. (His offer of a huge bonus if she lasts for six months helps her to make up her mind!)

Troppo shows this young woman experiencing a conflict of values. The novel is set in November 2004, just after the Bali and Denpasar bombings, and just before the Boxing Day tsunami. In contrast to her free-and-easy year on Bali, she finds the oppressive influence of strict Islamism has spread to the remote village of Batu Batur, and it makes her feel uneasy. She wants to respect Indonesian customs and culture, and she disapproves of young women flouting the cultural mores with scanty clothing, but she's used to Western freedoms, and feels resentful of restrictions placed on women because of their gender.

Penny is not a blithe tourist with a romanticised perspective: she observes the back-breaking labour in the rice paddies and feels uncomfortable about her own privileged position. At the same time, while she knows that she and Westerners like her are regarded as rich by virtue of their capacity to travel, to holiday, and to spend freely in the Indonesian economy, she has finite resources when it comes to returning to Australia. At home she is certainly not rich, and her erratic work history in the unqualified hospitality sector makes her financial future rather precarious. But her feelings of guilt lead to impulsive generosity — which of course reinforces local opinion that she has money to burn...

Considering herself well-acquainted with the domestic politics of commercial development in Indonesia, Penny thinks that the hostility to Shane is because of his impact on village life. But she is inevitably compromised. Her job involves working in a resort that supplants the local culture with its lavish facilities. Still, she can see that not only have the local fisherman had their livelihood disrupted by restrictions imposed by Shane, but also that resort development doesn't benefit the locals if they're not employed there.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/12/06/troppo-by-madelaine-dickie/… (mais)