Jill Blee is a remarkable woman: born in Ballarat where she now lives again, she is a ‘late bloomer’ as an author after a very varied career in Melbourne and Sydney. From an old article in The Age, I’ve learned that after school she trained as an industrial chemist, but like many women of her generation, she gave up work to have a family. When her marriage broke down she started a picture framing business, then sold insurance, and then was a factory manager. At 35 when her youngest started school, she started an arts degree, and – her interest in history fired by helping her children with projects – she went on to complete two Master of Arts degrees and a PhD, working as a live-in boarding-school housemistress so that she could study by day. And at 50 she began to write. I’ve previously reviewed Brigid (1999) and The Liberator’s Birthday (2002), and … without knowing it was Blee’s work as an historical researcher that I was watching, I’ve also seen some of the Doctor Blake Mysteries, set in Ballarat!
The Pines Hold Their Secrets (1988) is her first novel. It’s historical fiction, set on Norfolk Island during its period as a notorious penal settlement. Elise Cartwright travels with her family from the penal settlement in Hobart to Norfolk Island where her father – transferring under some unspecified cloud – has accepted a lesser position as Superintendent of Agriculture. He had been one of the most important men in Van Diemen’s Land and his silly wife is very conscious of her social position, fussing over frocks and what’s ‘appropriate’ and always manoeuvring to ensure that her three daughters marry well. Elise, an independent minded young woman in her early twenties, chafes at the social niceties and thus comes into brief contact with a convict called O’Shaughnessy while they are on board the Porpoise.
On Norfolk Island Elise is haunted by O’Shaughnessy’s enigmatic plea for help to prove his innocence, but can’t do anything about it. And despite Mrs Cartright’s best efforts to shield herself and her girls from anything unpleasant, before long all kinds of horrors are revealed, all reasonably consistent with what we know of Australia’s history as a penal colony. While there are a couple of rather melodramatic moments that test credulity as the novel reaches its climax, the plot rattles along quite well and the characters are generally well-drawn.
Academic study can sometimes infect the authenticity of dialogue in a novel but not so in The Pines Hold Their Secrets. Blee has a crisp, effective style, conveying in this example both the possibility of romance emerging in this unlikely place and the rudimentary nature of justice :
Orders were being given to the troops. The other ladies were walking together across the common to their homes on Military Row.
‘What’s going to happen?’ Elise asked, still holding onto Smith’s jacket.
‘The judge will pronounce the sentences. That’s why he’s here.’
‘Oh, what will they be?’ Tears were running down her face. Smith took out his handkerchief to catch them.
‘Two will hang, I believe. The others will be flogged.’
‘Which two? Do you know names?’
‘Not yet.’ (p.97)
The Pines Hold Their Secrets is engaging light reading, enhanced by a setting not often used in Australian novels. For the Term of His Natural Life comes to mind, of course, and no doubt Norfolk Island’s most famous resident Colleen McCullough set one of her novels there, but I can’t think of any others.
(It just crossed my mind that I could start categorising my reading by settings, but noooo, I’m going to resist that thought!)
Update 22/5/17 But see, I did not resist it for long… all the novels here are now categorised by their settings too, see the RH menu.
Author: Jill Blee
Title: The Pines Hold Their Secrets
Publisher: Indra Publishing, 1998
ISBN: 095877188x
Source: personal library, purchased from the author’s blog which seems not to have been active since 2013. However I poked around on Facebook and found out about a new limited edition book called Cuthberts: A Ballarat Institution, so Blee is still writing…
Availability: It looks as if it’s out of print. There are active links to Amazon for some of Blee’s titles on her blog but not for this novel. Try your library or secondhand bookshops.
ANZ LitLovers LitBlog 
Sounds like the author had a full life.
LikeLike
By: Guy Savage on February 14, 2017
at 2:47 am
Yes, and I think her experiences working with everyday people rather than academics is what makes her style authentic:)
LikeLike
By: Lisa Hill on February 14, 2017
at 10:22 am
I read Brigid about five years back when I started book blogging and I enjoyed it. I think i’d like this novel too and it’s setting. Thanks for sharing your thoughts :-)
LikeLike
By: Lauren K on February 14, 2017
at 12:07 pm
Hi Lauren:)
I wasn’t so keen on Brigid, but was impressed by her third book, The Liberator’s Birthday. And it’s always nice to read a book where you are familiar with the setting:)
LikeLike
By: Lisa Hill on February 14, 2017
at 3:47 pm
Tempted to read this one simply because of it’s setting. It’s a very strange place. And I’d LOVE you to compile a list of novels set on Norfolk Island (I’ve read several non-fiction books about contemporary NI, but no fiction).
LikeLike
By: MST on February 14, 2017
at 10:10 pm
Yikes, I shouldn’t have mentioned the word settings! Right now, I’m going through every post I’ve ever done by an Australian author, categorising them state by state so that I can work on my series State-by-State (https://anzlitlovers.com/category/category/australian-fiction/state-by-state/). It’s a ginormous amount of work… I have been doing about 50 each day for the best part of a week. It’s a crazy thing to do because authors move around: born here, educated there, worked here, “settled” there, and who knows how or even if they identify themselves by state anyway? I suspect that most Australians think of themselves as Aussies, except maybe for Queenslanders…
LikeLike
By: Lisa Hill on February 15, 2017
at 6:39 am
Now, now, now, don’t pick on Queenslanders Lisa! Good luck with your project. I’ve had a bit of that challenge with some of my location-based Monday Musings. As you say, so many authors have moved around.
Anyhow, good to hear of another late bloomer!
LikeLike
By: whisperinggums on February 17, 2017
at 9:19 pm
I’m not picking on them! I mean, I could have called ’em parochial, and I didn’t! No, seriously, I’ve read somewhere (The Conversation?) that Qld folks *do* identify differently, an attitude fostered by Old Joh that still lingers even though he is long gone. Even in my limited experience – of multiple visits to the Gold Coast and an outback road trip to the very far north, people will actually say to you, ‘oh, you’re from down south’ as if it’s a different world once you cross the border. And the difference between teasing that goes on between Sydney and Melbourne, is that the Queenslanders are serious. As if it matters.
LikeLike
By: Lisa Hill on February 18, 2017
at 7:39 am
Hmm… Perhaps. You could probably argue that re Tasmanians too, to some degree anyhow. They talk about the mainland as a different place and they feel the need for different treatment. And many Western Australians also feel they’re different.
As for Joh, I can see that argument. Fortunately I’d moved south by his time. You could argue though that it’s not just Joh encouraging Queenslanders to feel different but the rest of Australia ridiculing Queensland because of Joh resulting in Queenslanders banding together?
LikeLike
By: whisperinggums on February 18, 2017
at 7:54 am
Who knows? Anyway, my view is that there’s quite enough nationalism around the world without people in the same nation being parochial about what state they come from too!
LikeLike
By: Lisa Hill on February 18, 2017
at 8:12 am
Yes, agree.
LikeLike
By: whisperinggums on February 18, 2017
at 8:45 am
I’ll have to keep an eye out for this one – I’ve been to Norfolk Island and have often mused on what it must have been like to live there in the earlier years of the settlement.
LikeLike
By: jml297 on February 15, 2017
at 12:30 pm
I’ve never been there myself, but it seems to have a fascinating history:)
LikeLiked by 1 person
By: Lisa Hill on February 15, 2017
at 2:33 pm
I have always loved the title yet have never actually picked it up to read. I think it’s time I did.
LikeLike
By: riedstrap on February 25, 2017
at 6:45 am
It’s a good one, I agree:)
LikeLiked by 1 person
By: Lisa Hill on February 25, 2017
at 7:41 am