HOW well do we really know our history?
Author Peter Burke likes to tease his readers with snippets of fact that have wriggled between the lines of the accepted version of Western Australia’s founding years.
In his last novel Wettening Auralia, Burke ‘outed’ the author of the smear which supposedly broke engineer CY O’Connor’s spirit, and now he’s back to challenge what we know about the famous founder of New Norcia and his merry band of Benedictines.
For a start, who knew that 27 missionaries accompanied Dom Rosendo Salvado as he set sail from England aboard the Elizabeth in 1845, including nuns, brothers, catechists and a subdeacon named Tootle?
• Author Peter Burke likes to mess with what we thought was our history.
Burke says Sandgropers can get pretty stuck in their views about the state’s history, such as what constituted colonialism.
“But when you zoom in to the individuals involved, they’ve all got their backstory, for better or for worse,” he says.
“It turns out that usually in history, there aren’t any absolute goodies and absolute baddies.
“And that’s where the fun begins for me as a writer, it’s really looking at the humans involved.”
While the result is a funny and thought-provoking narrative, Burke says he still takes the history very seriously.
“My inspiration is to get West Australians to read their own history.
“Every time I get into a new topic, I’m staggered by how interesting and complex it was.
“I think, of course, the main purpose of us learning any history is to understand it, and to see our own times in a different light, and to make for a better future.”
Burke is a practicing doctor who grew up in East Fremantle and trained at Fremantle Hospital, opening the port city’s first mobile medical clinic.
He spent time working in the Kimberley, which is where he set his first historical fiction The Drowning Dream.
“I think that was when I really started getting interested in writing historical fiction when I was living up in that fantastic part of the world, the West Kimberley where you see so many interesting cultural interactions, and you read so much history and you want to turn it into something and have more people read about it.”
Having gone to school at St Benedict’s in Applecross and St Brendan’s in Hilton, Burke says it great living in an age where you can explore the darker side of a character like Dom Salvado without the fear of getting the cuts.
“I could have flipped it over and said ‘well, I’m just going to write something that says that the missionaries were all bad.
“But I don’t think that was true.
“The more you get to know these people, you see that they were very genuine in their wish to do good.
“That’s the old saying, ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions’.”
The Silk Merchant’s Son
Peter Burke
Fremantle Press
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IT’S a week before Earth Day. The four friends have learned many lessons from tending their garden.
Season of Giving explores the concept of service, environmental issues, and several spiritual qualities. Recommended for children ages 5 to 9.
Written by Ariana Rosenberg Illustrations by Andrea Benko
https://the-garden-children.com/
by ARIANA ROSENBERG