A writer’s consolation

I have been, for several days, composing pages of this:

[1] ‘Report from Assistant District Welfare Officer M. Ivory to H.C. Giese 23 May 1967’,REPORT FROM ASS. DISTRICT WELFARE OFFICER MICK IVORY TO GIESE 23RD MAY 1967 Press Release, E242, K66/1/1 District Welfare Officer Reports, Wave Hill Area ).[1] Memo: Deputy Secretary to the Minister of the Interior, ‘Wattie Creek, Channel Nine (Adelaide) Programme’, September 1968, Petition by Gurindji People to Governor-General re Wave Hill Pastoral Land, Northern Territory, National Archives of Australia, (A1734), NT1968/2509, Canberra. Digital copy, p97.[1] ibid, p 96.[1] Unknown, ‘Historic Debate’, Aboriginal Quarterly. Canberra, Abschol, Australian National University. Vol 1, No.3, 1968, p5.

A friend sent me a chapter born in England, via America, about Australia. In it Alan Garner offers a quote from Hazlitt, which both consoled me and layed out my aim:

‘If a man leaves behind him any work which is a model of its kind, we have no right to ask him whether he could do anything else, or how he did it, or how long he was about it.’ Viva la history!

~ by 1charlieward on December 14, 2010.