Friday essay: kangaroos and kindred spirits – D.H. Lawrence, Garry Shead and catching the flame of creativity

In 1922, self-exiled English novelist D.H. Lawrence arrived on Australian shores with his German wife Frieda. Travelling by steamboat from Italy to New Mexico via Sri Lanka, the pair disembarked in Sydney to spend a bit of time rediscovering their land legs. Lawrence was already a well-known writer by this point, with works such as Sons and Lovers and The Rainbow having been published in the decade before. However, this is to say little of his and Frieda’s financial situation.

Passing through Sydney’s famed headlands, the pair held in their possession a modest sum of 50 pounds, and after handing over four of those pounds for two nights’ accommodation in the harbour city, it became evident they’d be needing to find cheaper lodging if they were to spend any significant time in “the continent of the kangaroo”.

Boarding the 2pm train from Central Station and heading south, they arrived in the seaside township of Thirroul (now a northern suburb of Wollongong) and took up residence at “Wyewurk”, a Californian-style bungalow overlooking McCauley’s Beach previously leased by a family of 11 children. It was here, writing at the breakneck pace of some 3,000 words a day, that the child-free Lawrence penned his eighth novel, Kangaroo, in a mere six weeks.

I’m ambivalent about Kangaroo. It contains passages as technically and poetically brilliant as any to have been jotted down in English prose before or since, its psychological insights are convincing and artfully understated, while its representation of the Australian landscape remains as evocative today as it was at the time of publication when it helped free a cohort of Australian writers from the anxiety of European influence under which they’d been toiling.

As far as storytelling goes though, Kangaroo, with its clandestine right-wing army forever marking time and making plans, does less to excite my imagination. If I’m being completely honest, for all its virtuosity it probably would have ended up in the great pile of perennially bookmarked classics I was determined to enjoy but never quite got around to finishing were it not for the special place it holds in the oeuvre, and heart, of legendary Australian artist Garry Shead.