I still call Australia home

 in Della Sotheby / Phoebe Raye / Pim Connolly by

What was a typical Australian in 1928? Not until 1935 would all states celebrate Australia Day on 26 January. Sydney was officially still very British, and still celebrating Empire Day.

British immigration poster (Public domain)

British immigration poster
(Public domain)

The four girls in the quartet in A Distant Prospect were typical Aussies of the period, which is to say they were mostly European immigrants!

  • Lucy and her father Morgan are, of course, Irish.
  • Della’s late father The Captain was Anglo-Irish Ascendancy (English aristocracy in Ireland), her mother Mrs Sotheby is English and her stepfather Mr Sotheby is “as English as John Bull”, but raised in India.
  • Pim Connolly is several generations Australian, of Irish stock.
  • Phoebe’s father Roderick Raye had a Scottish immigrant father, and a mother half Chinese. Phoebe’s maternal grandmother was a Polish-French Jew.

Nationalism divided Europe, and the Great Depression was yet to come, but 1920s Australia was a land of hope and opportunity, and the harmony of Annette Young’s string quartet is a model for what our country can still be, at its best.

A Distant Prospect is a great Australian read, giving fresh insights into the cultural melting pot of a period of Australia’s history which is not often treated in our literature.

Bonus! Here is a teaser of perhaps the world’s best a cappella singing group, Australia’s own The Idea of North. The song is the late Peter Allen’s much-loved anthem for homesick Australians abroad, “I Still Call Australia Home.”