Non-Fiction

Review by Wendy Noble

Rosanne Hawke’s Across the Creek, published by Lothian Books, was launched in March 2004, in the basement of the Kapunda library. The old walls of rough-cut stones, the open beams, the musty, earthy smell and the darkness lit by a few dangling light bulbs, evoked the sense of being deep in the old Kapunda copper mine. It didn’t take much imagination to hear the whispering of treacherous piskeys and the lapping waters of the cold, underground lake. It was the perfect setting for a story based on Cornish folk-lore and set in a South Australian country town.

With experience teaching and living in Australia, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates, as well as travelling in England and France, Rosanne’s life is rich in resources for her books. Even though writing prolifically, with four books to be released in the first half of this year alone, she still finds time to teach in a primary school and TAFE, to run writers’ workshops for both children and adults, and to study for a PhD at the University of Adelaide.

Rosanne and her husband Gary, were aid workers in Northern Pakistan for seven years. While they were there, it was difficult for Rosanne to find enough for her children to read. Driven by necessity, and her love of a good story, she began to tell her own creations to her children. Her eldest daughter asked for one to be written down for her birthday, and that is how it all began. Her first published book, Re-entry (a CBC Notable Book and short-listed for the CROW awards) came out of the family’s experience of returning from Pakistan to the Australian culture that was once theirs and was now strange to them.

Re-entry was followed by Jihad and Cameleer, which were recently combined and re-released as the trilogy Borderlands. The Keeper, a story about a lad with ADD in search of a father, and its sequel, Sail-maker, were well received; the latter being short-listed for the Kanga awards. Zena Dare was the first of Rosanne’s books to explore her Cornish heritage, and this year she has produced a Cornish/Australian fantasy. As she lives near the site of the first Cornish copper mine in South Australia, it is appropriate that Across the Creek, a fantasy adventure, is set in an abandoned mine, similar to the one tourists can visit in Kapunda today.

Aidan’s friend Jenice, had been lost in the bush for a year, but he finds her alive and well, across the creek, in the strange land of Trevalia. Helped by a friendly piskey, Raff, he attempts to rescue her from the spriggans, a race of warrior fairies, but can he do it before he too is lost, frozen in time in the land of the Lady of the Lake?

Across the Creek contains all the traditional elements of a Cornish fairytale: piskeys, browneys, spriggans, the giant Trebiggan and a Lady of the Lake. But it is also a very Australian tale. Stories of children who have wandered into the bush, never to be seen again, are part of our history. What happened to these children? Traditional fairy stories are often used to explain the inexplicable. Across the Creek explores the mystery of death and the questions about missing persons, in a way children can understand. Is there something more to life than what we can see? In fairy stories, death may not necessarily mean the end of life. Sleeping Beauty wakes up, Rip Van Winkle comes home, Jenice Trengrove is found alive.

The story of Aidan and Jenice is a demonstration of the impact of one culture upon another. In the book, there are two symbols of the mingling of Cornish and Australian culture. The mythical creature, the dragaroo, is an obvious one: a hybrid dragon and kangaroo. The other, is the hero Aidan. Although a product of his Cornish heritage, rather than rely on magic, he rescues his friend and escapes the clutches of the dreaded Dragaroo through his own laconic character and intellect. It is the sum of the two cultures, Cornish and Australian, in the person of Aidan which gets him out of Trevalia.

In her stories, Rosanne wants to show young people that life can be a promising journey; that what happens isn’t as important as how one handles it. Cornish fairy-lore was a means of teaching children that through friendship, self-belief, wisdom and perseverance, they could overcome life’s difficulties. Across the Creek is not only faithful to this tradition, it is a wonderful adventure story for children aged 8 and up. But don’t let your age stop you from reading it. Kapunda’s local MP, Ivan Venning, thought he’d better glance over it before attending the launch and, at 2 am, finally finished reading. He said, he couldn’t put it down.

Why not visit Rosanne at her website, www.rosannehawke.com and discover this author and her stories for yourself.

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