Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
By David Hunt, Black Inc., $34.99.
David Hunt proudly labelled Girt Nation an ‘unofficial history’, no doubt, to indicate that his disrespectful take on Australia’s past does not follow in the footsteps of renowned historians such as Manning Clark and Geoffrey Blainey.
It’s astonishingly perceptive and impious, following on from Hunt’s previous two history books, Girt and True Girt. Like its predecessors, it retells our national story with humour and genuine affection.
Hunt crushes the tall poppies of the past. It is indeed “an epic tale of charlatans and costermongers, of bush bards and bushier beards, of workers and women who weren’t going to take it anymore”.
Girt Nation introduces Alfred Deakin, when a ‘new voice’ is heard, one that will unite a people. A voice that will harness the power of a club of sexist, racist insurance salesmen to transform Australia from an aspiration into a nation.
‘The three-term prime minister and leading light of the Spiritualism movement in Australia, ‘affable Alf’ was considered to be a skilled medium and claimed to take counsel from those in the spirit world. He was an impressive parliamentary performer and a campaigner for a range of causes that would be popular today, including animal rights and women’s rights.’
The Liberal necromancer whose dead advisors made Australia a better place to live, and Banjo Paterson, the jihadist who called on God and the Prophet to drive the Australian infidels from the Sudan ‘like sand before the gale’.
Meet Catherine Helen Spence, the feminist polymath who envisaged a utopian future of free contraceptives, easy divorce and immigration restrictions to prevent the ‘Chinese coming to destroy all we have struggled for!’
With illustrations by Ad Long, Girt Nation precisely and nimbly, unearths many undetected or unremembered facts that elucidate the past. Hunt ridicules his distastes, but he does provide outstanding footnotes and an all-inclusive index.
