This article needs additional citations for verification .(December 2009) |
![]() First edition (Heinemann) | |
Author | Nevil Shute |
---|---|
Country | Australia |
Language | English |
Genre | Fiction |
Publisher | Heinemann |
Publication date | 1952 |
Media type | |
Pages | 326 pp. |
Preceded by | Round the Bend |
Followed by | In the Wet |
The Far Country is a novel by Nevil Shute, first published in 1952. [1]
In this novel, Shute has some harsh things to say about the new (British) National Health Service, as well as the socialist Labour government, themes he would later develop more fully in In the Wet . He describes the lot of the 'New Australians'; refugees who are required to work for two years where they are placed, in return for free passage to Australia.
The story takes place partly in London and partly in Australia. It is set in 1950. Jennifer Morton, a young girl from Leicester but living in London, witnesses the death of her grandmother, the widow of a retired Indian civil servant. Her pension has ceased and she has literally starved to death, despite once being prosperous. Before she dies, she leaves Jennifer a small sum of money sent by a niece in Australia, and asks that Jennifer use the money to visit Jane and Jack Dorman who own a prosperous sheep station in Merrijig Victoria. She does so.
Jennifer finds herself falling in love with the new, relatively unspoiled country, though she continues to worry about her parents. She also meets Carl Zlinter, a 'New Australian'; a Czech refugee who is working at the nearby lumber camp of a timber company as a condition of his free passage to Australia. A medical doctor qualified to practise in Czechoslovakia, he is not qualified to practise in Australia and only looks after First Aid at the lumber camp but when an accident badly injures two of the workers and no doctor, nurse or medical facilities are available, he is faced with the choice of either watching the workers die or operating on them; he chooses to operate, and Jennifer assists him. The two operations are successful, but one man later gets drunk and dies. Zlinter is initially in potentially serious trouble over the unlicensed operations and death, but he is cleared of responsibility.
Jennifer helps Zlinter to trace the history of a man of the same name who lived and died in the district many years before, during a gold rush, and they find the site of his house.
Back in England, Jennifer's mother dies and she is forced to return, but she is now restless and dissatisfied. Zlinter turns up in Leicester; he has found gold dust that the earlier Zlinter earned as a bullock driver and hid beneath a stone. He has used the money from illegally selling the gold to travel to England to ask Jennifer to marry him, and to re-qualify as a medical practitioner.
The character of Carl Zlinter may have been inspired by Dr Marcus Clarke, whom Nevil Shute accompanied in 1948 on his rounds as a country doctor in Cairns, Australia.
The character of Billy Slim was based on Fred Fry, a notable fly fisherman, who constructed several huts along the Howqua River and eked out a quiet existence in the river valley. [2]
The title comes from the 40th poem (in Roman numerals XL) in A.E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad . [3]
Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.
The novel was adapted for television again in the 1980s. The miniseries screened on the Seven Network in 1987 starring Michael York, Sigrid Thornton, and Maureen Edwards as Mrs Morton. Shooting took place in September and October 1985, and took place entirely in Victoria even though some scenes were set in Britain and Europe. [4]
Nevil Shute Norway was an English novelist and aeronautical engineer who spent his later years in Australia. He used his full name in his engineering career and Nevil Shute as his pen name, in order to protect his engineering career from inferences by his employers (Vickers) or from fellow engineers that he was "not a serious person" or from potentially adverse publicity in connection with his novels, which included On the Beach and A Town Like Alice.
On the Beach is an apocalyptic novel published in 1957, written by British author Nevil Shute after he emigrated to Australia. The novel details the experiences of a mixed group of people in Melbourne as they await the arrival of deadly radiation spreading towards them from the Northern Hemisphere, following a nuclear war some years previous. As the radiation approaches, each person deals with impending death differently.
A Town Like Alice is a romance novel by Nevil Shute, published in 1950 when Shute had newly settled in Australia. Jean Paget, a young Englishwoman, becomes romantically interested in a fellow prisoner of World War II in Malaya, and after liberation emigrates to Australia to be with him, where she attempts, by investing her substantial financial inheritance, to generate economic prosperity in a small outback community—to turn it into "a town like Alice" i.e. Alice Springs.
Mansfield is a small town in the foothills of the Victorian Alps in the Australian state of Victoria. It is approximately 180 kilometres (110 mi) north-east of Melbourne by road. The population around Mansfield was 4,787 as at the 2016 census. The town itself has 3410 persons.
The Chequer Board is a novel by Nevil Shute, first published in the United Kingdom in 1947 by William Heinemann Ltd. The novel deals with the question of racism within the US forces during World War II and portrays black characters with sympathy and support. Shute began writing The Chequer Board September 1945 and completed it February 1946.
On the Beach is a 1959 American post-apocalyptic science fiction drama film from United Artists starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire, and Anthony Perkins. Produced and directed by Stanley Kramer, it is based on Nevil Shute's 1957 novel On the Beach depicting the aftermath of a nuclear war. Unlike the novel, no one is assigned blame for starting the war, which attributes global annihilation to fear compounded by accident or misjudgment.
Requiem For A Wren is a novel by Nevil Shute. It was first published in 1955 by William Heinemann Ltd. It was published in the United States under the title The Breaking Wave.
Marcus Carlyle Clarke was an Australian medical doctor who at the age of 23 was appointed District Surgeon, North Borneo, based at Kudat after answering an advertisement in the Medical Journal of Australia in 1938. After an eventful year in Kudat, he was transferred to Sandakan as Port Health Officer, then to Keningau as District Surgeon, Beaufort and the Interior.
This article presents a list of the historical events and publications of Australian literature during 2003.
The Howqua River, a minor inland perennial river of the Goulburn Broken catchment, part of the Murray-Darling basin, is located in the Alpine region of the Australian state of Victoria. The headwaters of the Howqua River rise below Mount Howitt in the western slopes of the Victorian Alps, and descend to flow into the Goulburn River within Lake Eildon.
This article presents a list of the historical events and publications of Australian literature during 1946.
This article presents a list of the historical events and publications of Australian literature during 1948.
This article presents a list of the historical events and publications of Australian literature during 1952.
This article presents a list of the historical events and publications of Australian literature during 1953.
This article presents a list of the historical events and publications of Australian literature during 1954.
This article presents a list of the historical events and publications of Australian literature during 1955.
This article presents a list of the historical events and publications of Australian literature during 1956.
This article presents a list of the historical events and publications of Australian literature during 1957.
This article presents a list of the historical events and publications of Australian literature during 1960.
The Far Country is a 1972 Australian mini-series based on the novel of the same name by Nevil Shute. The novel was adapted for television on the ABC, consisting of six episodes. It started on 9 February 1972.