ANZ LitLovers LitBlog

After being so impressed by The Fish Girl (2017, co-winner of the Seizure Award, see my review) I was mildly disappointed by Mirandi Riwoe’s second novel Stone Sky Gold Mountain. It is well-written historical fiction, depicting an aspect of Queensland’s colonial history, but I didn’t find its insights as incisive as The Fish Girl with its unforgettable central character, fleshed out from her shadowy presence in Somerset Maugham’s story of The Four Dutchmen.  That book was a lesson in how to interrogate for ourselves the stories we’ve grown up, from a 21st century perspective…

However, I am well out-of-step with critical reception for this novel, and maybe if my expectations hadn’t been so high, I would have been well content.

Longlisted for the 2021 Miles Franklin Award and a Stella Prize nominee, Stone Sky Gold Mountain is a story of the Chinese at Palmer River during the Queensland Gold Rush.  It has been widely reviewed, and nobody else seems disappointed…

Katelin Farnsworth at Mascara sums up the book like this:

Without sanctimony, the book asks the reader to examine their prejudices, to consider the stories they’ve been told, and the stories that are still continually shared and perpetuated.

Brona at This Reading Life, picks up on this theme of the stories that are told, noting that the stories of white people exploring and moving into the area dominate the cultural narrative, even though…

During Riwoe’s research for this novel, she discovered that Cooktown and the Palmer River area, during the goldrush era, actually had a population that was significantly more Chinese than Anglo.

(Knowing what I do of the requirements of the mandated Australian Curriculum, I would merely note that, whatever its failings when older generations were at school, the curriculum has been much more inclusive for many years now. Studies of The Ancient World mandate the study of an Asian civilisation, either Indian or Chinese; and the role of the Chinese at Palmer River is specifically mentioned in V8.4 of the current AC. But as for how our history is presented in contemporary popular culture, I wouldn’t know because I don’t take any notice of it.)

Theresa Smith found the novel a truthful read, but not a depressing one,  and from her vantage point as a Queenslander commented amongst other things on the authenticity of the setting:

Deeply atmospheric, the setting and era is conjured through the narrative vividly and consistently. There is no mistaking the location within this novel, and anyone who has lived in central and north Queensland will relate to the sense of cloying and oppressive heat that lifts from the pages of this story.

The central character in Stone Sky Gold Mountain is Mei Ying, who has come to the goldfields with her brother to make enough money to redeem their siblings who’ve been sold to pay for their father’s debts.  As Brona notes in her review: the Chinese did not come as settlers, but with the intention of returning home to China as wealthy people.  But as for so many seekers of gold, things don’t work out well.

This thread make me think afresh about the geography of the novel… the vast distances of Queensland and its comparative under-development in the colonial era must have impacted on opportunities for unsuccessful miners. Palmer River is still miles from anywhere. Ying’s brother Lai Yue has little option but to take work as a carrier for an inland expedition while Ying can only get work in a shop if she disguises her gender, (an aspect of characterisation that I did not find convincing).  There is a Chinese storekeeper who grows vegetables and sells cooked produce to the miners, but his customers are nearly all Chinese.  The exception is Meriem who is refused service in ‘respectable’ shops because she is the servant of a prostitute.

The story of Chinese migration is celebrated here in Victoria. In Melbourne, where teachers like me have taken (literally) hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren through the Museum of Chinese History in Chinatown you can discover that the Chinese in Victoria were quick to take advantage of the opportunity for profitable ventures that could supply the diggers with what they needed.  They not only set up market gardens and orchards, (which feature in Henry Handel Richardson’s 1930 trilogy The Fortunes of Richard Mahoney) they also set up manufacturing to make furniture and fittings for the growing colony.  Here, too, there was racism, but many Chinese stayed, forming vibrant communities as they did so.

But that’s not all: it was in Melbourne that there was opportunity for the Chinese to tell their own stories.  Australia’s and possibly the West’s earliest Chinese-language novel was serialised in Melbourne’s Chinese Times and while it took far too long for it to be translated, the fact that it exists at all is due to someone taking the initiative to set up a Chinese language newspaper and the existence of a community to make it economically viable.  That novel was The Poison of Polygamy (1909-1910), by Wong Shee Ping, translated by Ely Finch and it puts Chinese migration into a different perspective, one not attributable to the failures of individuals but which identifies structural reasons for poverty. As I noted in my review, the author:

…ascribed the entire problem of Chinese poverty to the prevailing government of the Manchu dynasty, whose exploitative regime made it necessary for families to be separated for many years while the husband worked in destinations far from home.  He is scathing about the position of Chinese women, whose lack of education and subservient position made them vulnerable to abuse and exploitation, as well as making them ‘silly’.  But he reserves his most potent condemnation for the practice of concubinage, which was destructive of family values and insulting to the senior wife.

I do like it when the books I read come together like this!

See also Jonathan’s review at Me Fail? I Fly. 

Author: Mirandi Riwoe
Title: Stone Sky Gold Mountain
Publisher: UQP (University of Queensland Press), 2020
ISBN: 9780702262739, pbk., 254 pages
Source: Personal library, purchased from Benn’s Books, $29.99