Summary: The Liberator’s Birthday is a story about a group of Irishmen who live
around the junction between Redan and Sebastopol to the south of
Ballarat. Both districts were centres of intensive goldmining during the
second half of the nineteenth century. Mining impacts on all their
lives. They have either been involved themselves in raking the riches
out of the earth or they have supplied the mines and men with needs.
Some mined when every man was his own boss, others had to be content
with wages begrudgingly paid by hard nosed managers. The more
enterprising formed up into tribute parties and contracted out their
services. All were affected by what mining had done to the environment,
the muddy roads and paths, the dammed creeks overflowing with all manner
of effluent, the flooded back yards and the privies that spilled over
to provide a deadly cocktail of diseases which threatened all their
lives. In the summer they put up with grit carried from the mining sites
by the hot winds and deposited into every crevice, and there wee the
flies and mosquitoes which bred on the pools of stagnant water. And
there was always the noise as quartz mining replaced alluvial and the
city and surrounds were dotted with huge powerful stamper batteries to
crush the rock.
These Irishmen gathering in a pub on the corner
of Rubicon and Skipton Streets had other concerns too. Prominent among
them was the Catholic Church which, unlike the benign and understanding
church their ancestors had fought and died for, had become a stern and
unbending task master. It had imposed upon them rules and regulations
that were hard to understand and even harder to obey.
They had to
turn their backs on comrades with whom they had shared the great
adventure of gold mining. They could no longer count among their friends
men who did not profess the Catholic Church as the one true church, and
they could not marry any woman who took their fancy. The children too
had to be in schools approved by the church and increasingly these were
ones constructed with money that had come from their own pockets.
Some
of them were confused, others resentful, but they were also fearful.
They knew they could not disobey. To do so would be to place themselves
outside the church and dam their souls forever.
They
brought their old-world conflict with them to the new land. The Orange
and the Green focussed their antagonism on neighbourhood pubs in 1875,
at a difficult time on the famous Ballarat goldfields. Jill Blee
skilfully surrounds her characters with the flavours of time and place.
The mines and mining tragedies loom in the background while the
belligerence of miners and lorrymen, together with their imported
patriotism and religious bigotry threaten the desire of the Farrell
family to achieve wealth and respectability This special day in the life
of their pub becomes life itself, filled with contemporary spleen,
beautifully described household routines, and relentless social climbing
that threatens Tommy Farrell's chance of finding love.
What I thought: I have wanted to read this for years as it is about Ballarat. Unfortunately it didn't do much for me. Pretty boring read and only interesting as I could envision the places described as I live here.
