I read this book in the context of seasons of pestilence, fire, and flood, and also the swelling of a more considered national response to the the Voice from the Heart. Song of the Crocodile takes multiple journeys through through the Australian outback. It twines together the story of the Billymil family and their inexorable disconnection from their culture and land. It examines the impact of white dispossession of indigenous people, and their culture - displaced by a culture blind to and heedless of the land and the spiritual connection between people and country. This is a complex narrative of First Nations cosmology, and the tragedy of the relationship between white and First Nations peoples. It tries to explore the attempt of culture to reclaim its people, and free itself of corruption. It is a melancholy story. The imagery of bulldozing, drowning, violence, exploitation, and sacrifice look to the power of nature seeking to start again. This is a powerful, at times bleak, and unsettling story.

Nardi Simpson's debut novel Song of the Crocodile made quite a splash on release. Developed through the auspices of the 2018 black&write! fellowship award, it was shortlisted for the 2021 ALS Gold medal, the 2020 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, the 2021 Indie Debut Fiction award, and for the 2021 UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards. It was also longlisted for the 2021 Australian Book Industry Awards, the 2021 Stella Prize, and the 2021 Miles Franklin Award. Thanks to the digital option, I was able to hear Nardi Simpson talking about her book with Nelly Thomas at the WillyLitFest which made me even more keen to read it.

Her prose is utterly captivating:

The journey always begins prettily. The glory of a new dawn shines light around bends of peaceful ranges, pink and orange dazzling as it rises, warming your back, sending you on your way. Curves of rock sway then twist and you dance on hips and belly, shoulders and neck of the sleeping mountain-woman beneath. As you continue, a ridge line crests then opens. You tiptoe along it, tyres tickling her spine until a steep descent to cleared, encouraged green opens into paddock and field, the land at her base rocky and rich, both signs of fortune and luck.

Knife-sharp ranges and distant hills beckon. You continue towards them until eventually they dissolve into hints of ripple and crease. Finally you hit the flat. And scrub. And flat and scrub it continues to be — bland and harsh and unforgiving. Wide. Bare earth, spare space, forgotten land. Black dirt meets red earth and turns metal hard. Hot springs and dried lakes hide motionless, waiting for reason to wake and flow. But this you cannot see; the scrub hides her secrets well.

You travel on and on, and on further still, numbed by endless coolabahs and tufts of grass and itchy blue blanket sky. Only when boredom, exhaustion and blindness take hold does life rise from the plains: a sign. Darnmoor, The Gateway to Happiness. (p.3-4)

The (fictional) town of Darnmoor is, however, a place of mixed blessings. Emblematic of countless country towns across Australia, it's a town divided by race, where the white residents celebrate progress, participate in civic events commemorating their history and live in respectable comfort. The Billymil family, on the other hand, live in the Campgrounds, in rudimentary shacks without electricity or running water. These people have joyous family lives, and make the most of the natural environment around them, but they can't get ahead because they are paid less than white workers doing the same jobs, if they are paid at all. The racial prejudice and discrimination they face is overt and unrelenting.

The multi-generational saga begins with Margaret who does the laundry for the town's hospital. It's a dirty job that no one else wants to do but she gets satisfaction out of finding time to visit the old and the lonely with a cheering word, a cup of tea or a gentle touch. But before long, she is blamed for pilfering from a patient's drawer when the real culprit is Matron's light-fingered daughter...

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2021/07/04/song-of-the-crocodile-by-nardi-simpson/ ( )

Song of the Crocodile is a vibrant, and poignant story of three generations of the Billymil family who live on the fringes of a tiny outback town, Darnmoor, ‘The Gateway to Happiness’.

For Margaret, her daughter Celie, and Celie’s daughter, Mili, the Campgrounds along the banks of the Mangamanga River amongst their people, the Yuwaalaraay, is home, separated from the town proper by a rubbish tip, and the untenable contempt and suspicion of the white townspeople who have laid claim to their land.

Watched over by their ancestors, who are waiting and preparing for the time they will be needed to sing the ‘Song of the Crocodile’, life unfolds for the three women, the ordinary business of living touched by joy, tragedy, desire, pain, success and violence. Their stories are profound, their experiences both commonplace and, to me, unfamiliar. I felt for each of them, admiring their strengths, commiserating with their losses, appalled by their mistreatment.

Progress is a double-edged sword, wearing on the connections to family and land. Tension builds slowly, rifts widen, a reckoning approaches with a storm.

Rich, lyrical, and affecting, Song of the Crocodile is an accomplished debut from Nardi Simpson that tells a story of a people, their culture and country. ( )