First published in 1938, Capricornia was with affectionate irony called ‘that old botch’, but it was popular from the day of its publication and has remained in print to this day. It is a bit ‘blotchy’ and if not for the sternness of its vision, I might read it as a Picaresque Romance detailing life in the distant colony of Capricornia under conditions which are barbaric to say the least. Much of the novel is taken up with the plight of the rapidly increasing mixed race. A representative of ‘the Coloureds’ is the sympathetic main character ‘Norman’. The emphasis placed on this new ‘racial’ type, who is seen as being more noble than either White or Black, reveals a mythology which uses oppositional symbolism to stress the theme and counter-theme of the novel.
In many ways, Capricornia finds a mate in the much later Maurice Chauvel film, Jedda (1955), even to the construction of characters who often seem flat and, writing from the present, slightly absurd. Jedda could also be called a Picaresque Romance, though placing them under the same label glosses over the very contradictions which the novel proposes to explore. Additionally, the underlying seriousness of Capricornia separates it from the somewhat simplistic realist film of Chauvel. Both, however, have endings which reveal the pessimism Europeans seem to get from exposure to an Australia so markedly different from Europe.
Capricornia is massive and might have become an epic in which two races with opposing cultures meet, battle it out, sink into each other’s arms and create the new Australian race, a mixture of good points from the opposing cultures; but this synthesis never occurs. Vincent Buckley writes, ‘The total impression of the book is one of great creative energy battling against a universe of appalling waste’. The vision of a ‘new race’ being created in the colony is at odds with the strong emphasis placed on Fate which plays ‘dingo to all men’—black and white. (Does this ‘Dingo of Fate’ equate with the Giant Devil Dingo of Aboriginal mythology, which devours humankind?) It is an all-compelling deity bringing to nought man and his works, including the promised new race. The novel ends on a note of pessimism. Things will continue as they are fated to do, and as I have argued before, this is a strong trait of the Australian character. Even the very metaphors applied to the land reflect this pessimism: Ancient, arid, the dead heart, flood-ridden, drought-infested, ‘one bloody thing after another’. Man is caught in the twister of Fate and goes around and around. This is stressed in the novel and there is absent a sense of control which the concept of a ‘new race’ might have been able to supply. If I read the novel correctly, the ‘new race’ in the process of being formed would eventually be able to direct its own fate. Unfortunately the vision falters and, instead of exploring any political and cultural possibilities inherent in the ‘new race’, Herbert resolves his novel by the acceptance of an overarching Fate against which mankind strives in vain.
I use ‘man’ and ‘mankind’ because I find Herbert’s novel hard and masculine. The style is close to the bald prose of reportage. Thus, the wide brown land may also be used as a metaphor to a text which is close to the popular best seller. Characters are not so much developed as created in a nutshell, that is, in a name. Thus ‘Norman’ may equal No-man or New-man, a Coloured who is a representative of the new race. Norman is a product of what Thomas Keneally in The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith has called ‘the white phallus’ (which may also be equated with white shame). He is the bastard son of the grazier Mark Shillingsworth and an unknown black woman. Norman is also the protagonist in the novel, and it is through him that the ‘new race’ is shown and a transformation attempted.
Sexual need and sexual shame mark the colonisation of Capricornia. And it is this sexual need and the resultant shame that Herbert seeks to exorcise, or transform. The sins of the Colonisers can be no sins, if the result is a New Race of Capricornians. It is not individual sexual need which is at issue; but the very ‘fact’ of natural selection. The novel represents sexual need and shame, not from the position of colonial dominance; but through the workings of the Darwinian theory of Natural Selection as applied to races. In trying to do this, Herbert begins his narrative with a wry description of the founding of the main settlements on the coast and moves on to the eventual subjugation of the whole territory of Capricornia. The novel is similar to those by Wilbur Smith which detail the founding and development of the colony of Rhodesia and its revolution into the sovereign state of Zimbabwe; but unlike these postwar novels which are firmly slotted into the genre of romantic adventure, Herbert has a more serious intent in writing the history of his colony. In truth, it is a sad colony and not one man of the stature of Cecil Rhodes appears. It is a ‘universe of appalling waste’; but one in which the promise of the ‘New Man’ is seeded. The promise is there, but remains only a promise. The New Man is confronted by Giant Devil Dingo Fate, and goes under as the crows cry dismally. Herbert’s characters are under the control of this ‘Fate’ and develop towards an acceptance of it as the overarching Law of the universe.
Uncle Oscar gives Norman an education and then property. Norman becomes a man of substance, one able to take his place in what passes for society in Capricornia. But, after journeying South for an education, he returns to find he is still a ‘half-caste’. Initially, he is shocked to discover that he does indeed belong to both races; but then he comes to the realisation that he is their heir. It is at this point that Herbert’s vision falters and Norman suffers a personal tragedy which prevents him from taking his rightful place. The Giant Devil Dingo Fate intervenes on the side of the ‘status quo’.
Herbert peoples the colony of Capricornia with a rich cast of characters, some of whom marry the native women they keep as mistresses. An important minor character is Peter Differ. Peter ‘I beg to differ’ is a failed poet and has been considered Xavier Herbert’s mouthpiece. He is a sympathetic character, and in his obligatory discourse on race relations he takes the side of the emerging ‘Coloureds’. He has helped in the creation of this race; but unlike most other white men, he elects to marry his Black woman. He begs to differ and refuses to accept the syndrome of need and shame under which many men of the colony suffer. He seeks to place himself on the side of the scientific theory of natural selection. But the matrimonial act means little to his fellow colonists; merely a shift in shame. Now he suffers the shame of a white father whose children are treated no differently from illegitimate half-castes.
Herbert reveals, though he does not state, that a colonial society works by exclusion. Effectively, it is made up of many settler factions, each with some degree of power or influence, which find unity only in defending their privileged position against the colonised. This state of affairs is recognised in the novel, though Herbert does not give an analysis of the political situation in the Territory. In 1937, the year before the novel was published, state representatives of Aboriginal Authorities met in Canberra. Each state representative gave an account of Native Affairs in his respective state. Most favoured the assimilation of the Aborigine into the wider society. This position was endorsed by the representative from the Northern Territory who in his address expressed alarm at the rapidly increasing mixed population that, growing up bitter and unfranchised, might in time take over the whole territory.
Thus, at the same time the novel was being written there was a fear in the Northern Territory that the white minority population might lose its place of dominance and be replaced by a ‘Coloured’ majority. Xavier Herbert, active in Aboriginal Affairs, would have been aware of this concern, and he addresses it in his novel. He shows us the formation of this race, but none of its political ambitions. His ‘New Race’, coming into being through natural selection and destined to succeed both black and white, is set up in opposition to ‘Fate’; and eventually ‘Fate’ wins. In his narrative, it is the ‘Coloureds’ that suffer the most and who exist in the most precarious social position. They are more victims than victors, and this may be what Herbert had in mind when raising the idea, or vision, of a superior mixed race. Politically, they have no power and no status, except in the set speeches of ‘well-meaning’ white characters. What happens