War in Australia, or Australia at War With Itself: David Ireland's Burn

In Burn, his fourth published novel, 1 Ireland uses war - and violence - to develop a number of his perceptions of Australians and their society. Some of the images of the repressive and destructive nature of respectable, institutionalized society which characterized The Chantic Bird and The Unknown Industrial Prisoner, 2 are here the backdrop against which Ireland presents a group of descendants of those who had inhabited the land before the arrival of the English. The novel presents an evocative picture of a day in the life of a blacks' camp, that outermost fringe of respectable (white) Australian society.