Beauty in rain and tears - Ruth Park passes

Ruth Park has passed away. 


She has left us some wonderful Australian literature Harp in the South, Poor Man's Orange, Missus and of course, the Muddle Headed Wombat. 


It was such life affirming literature to have been reading as a teenager. Dolour (Latin for pain), the heroine in the series emerged as a truly good human being, resilient, other-centred, loving and appreciating the true nature of real human experience and the beauty in rain and tears. 


From memory, many of my schoolmates were pretty non-plussed by this literature. It is slightly less grim than Angela's Ashes that we would all read decades later, but it captures the resilience on the one hand, but the harsh costs of lapses of judgement that we mere mortals suffer. Just how hard it is to keep going when it seems that the chips are so stacked against you yet, how very often, poor choices make a bad situation worse and cost you or your family's wellbeing. Standout themes were  the resilience and the goodness of the women. How sustaining the religious practice and symbols were. Another theme was the pain implicit in low social standing and the complex emotions, and behaviours this influences. The depth of the Australian culture's Irish inheritance, and how deeply it has shaped our broader national sensibility. 


The culture of Sydney in particular seems influenced by the Irish inheritance, with Melbourne having a number of other competing strands - Greek, Italian, Jewish, Goldfields Chinese.



Ruth Park and her husband Darcy Niland chose to be freelance writers, come what may, and they prevailed. They had five children and only the certainty of uncertainty. They had to write well to survive and feed their family and you can taste the determination on the page and they were prolific as well. 


I found the novels absolutely touching and sustaining and their promotion of a loving resilience resonated deeply with me. My own mother's struggle town Irish heritage was on every page as well so it felt familiar and important. It is said that the Surry Hills of the era was an island of Victorian england in modern Sydney and somehow I have always felt connected to such islands - trips down memory lane of memories that were not even mine but those of my people. And they had spiritual depth and resonance. There was a trust by all in an ultimately gentle and available God, visible each day in the little acts of kindness chosen by people moment by moment. 


The novel and its author were even more powerful figures in my imaginative life of adolescence, as in 1985 I played Roie, Dolour's older sister, in a production directed by the marvellous Connie Ord at the Old Mill Theatre in South Perth. My drama teacher, and Connie's daughter, Rosalind Jennings played the mother, Mamma, and her daughter Sarah (now the actress Caitlin Ord) played the lead Dolour - she was good.  Connie's son Duncan did the lighting. 


It was pretty damned marvellous to be given that opportunity but I never fully inhabited the part. Roie was a bit passive and tragic for me, and I think I remember my performance struggled not to trip into melodrama. Sarah was a buoyant and compelling Dolour and Rosaling Jennings a magnificent Mamma, not withstanding she was being directed by her phenomenal, force of nature, teensy own mother. So there I was part of this drama within a drama, a rich and wonderful life experience. It was a most intimate encounter with three generations of one of Perth's most theatrical families. Lucky little me. One of my strongest memories is the guy who played Hugh, the father, making me tapes and teaching me about Jazz and John Coltrane, the great impromptu saxophonist. I used to play the cassettes he made for me over and over - Summertime and These are a few of my favourite things come to mind. Magnificent music. I remember Rosalind (my teacher Mrs Jennings') husband, Murray who produced and compered  the Sunday night Jazz show on the ABC,  being very cross about me being introduced to Jazz via John Coltrane. He was just livid, he just thought teaching a 15 year old girl about jazz and starting with John Coltrane was ludicrous.  Another layer of drama in the drama.   


Anyway, I certainly hope that however old fashioned they may appear to contemporary teachers, that this wonderful Australian literature manages to hold on by its fingernails, and stay in the Australian high school English curriculum. The great creator of this tangled web of Australian depression era slum life, with its crosses and sorrows, resilience and triumphs,  is gone. Ruth Park is dead. Long may her novels live.