From these I have chosen to concentrate for your survey on my two young adult novels Lily Makes A Living (Hodder Headline,1996) and Island Girl (Hybrid Publishers, 2009, distributed by Wakefield Press) and answer questions on setting.
Pick one of your favourites among the settings from your published fiction stories or a setting which is an interesting example from your published fiction. What makes this setting one of your favourites or an interesting example from your fiction?
The settings of both books are landscapes of South Australia. Lily lives in the sparsely populated part of the rural Mid-North of the state, a land of great skies and wide open spaces. Settlers have been trying to make a living there since the state was opened for settlement in 1836. The Aboriginal people, the Ngadjuri, were decimated by introduced diseases as well as displaced by settlers and livestock. The area is dotted with Aboriginal place names, but the descendants of Ngadjuri survivors now mainly live on Yorke Peninsula or in Adelaide. There are remnant stately homes with a balllroom or guest wing and servant quarters, set in park-like gardens. Lily gets a job in the garden of a ‘big house’. But the dusty litte townships have hardly changed in half a century. Empty shop houses show mortal decline. Drought hits hard here when it strikes. Periodically there is population loss. The main defensive changes has been extensive planting of trees by landholders over the last thirty years and improved farming methods. Farming is the main source of income. People make their own entertainment. I love the Mid-North and have travelled there time and again, planting trees, giving writing workshops, looking for rock paintings, doing archaeology.
Bianka, the protagonist of Island Girl, lives on a small fictional island west of Kangaroo Island. I chose to create a fictional setting because I wish the writers of Kangaroo Island (where the inspiration came from) will themselves write novels set on their island. So Platypus Island is not once removed from the mainland but twice, because Kangaroo Island, or Kanga, is the big smoke with over 4000 inhabitants. Islands in the Great Southern Ocean have stunning rock formations, caves and beaches. There are a few substantial 19thC houses, in one of which Bianka finds her great-grandmother’s diary. There are lighthouses, one inhabited by a hermit. Farming is the main industry, with some tourism. Mysteries of human comings and goings are part of the island’s developing mythology - it suffers periodic population loss, but gets summer visitors and a variety of ‘blow-ins’, people with a single purpose: naturalists, artist, geologists, marine biologists.
What makes these settings interesting is that they are remote and marginal in relation to the state’s capital city with its fortnightly bread and circusses of festivals and popular events. Many of the settlers came to these landscapes as marginal people, but as generations continue they identify with the place, become the human element that complements it, its curators and protectors. They lead a hands-on life, with endless diversions of a local kind. Because of the skies and the ocean there is a sense of freedom, of never feeling locked in.
What is a setting from a published fiction story by another author you would compare this setting to and why are they similar?
I seldom read fiction nowadays and can’t think of a similar setting. I did read some Colin Thiele books and his Storm Boy set on the Coorong also has the boom of ocean waves, the wide water, skies and birds. It seems to me that most books are set in towns and cities, or in the outback where life is dangerous and easily lost. I’m interested in the landscapes and people in between.
How would you describe the way you introduced this setting to readers of your story?
No better way to introduce the setting then by introducing characters who live there. Bianka and her mother Katinka wait for their weekly supplies in front of the Bay Shop. Another customer, Ivy Rutt, remarks on Bianka’s likeness to a woman whose name Bianka has never heard. Mother doesn’t reply and seems displeased. Gary, the shop owner carries out the supplies and Ivy drives off after reminding Katinka to bake biscuits for a trading table to raise funds for district nurses.
Katinka and Bianka drive to the crossing where the schoolbus drops off Bianka’s younger siblings. During a ten-minute wait Bianka questions her unwilling mother about the woman Ivy mentioned. This mysterious woman turns out to be Bianka’s great-grandmother, who is never mentioned in the family.
Also disclosed in the first few pages is an outline of the family’s antecedents through Bianka’s probing, a figurative skeleton in the family cupboard, the flooding of their farm track, the hermit with an adopted name, the yellow schoolbus and Klaus the Driver who has an island sense of humour. Later in the story there are descriptive passage of sea, land, flora and fauna.
How would you describe the integration of characters and setting in this story?
The integration of the family members (parents, four siblings, and invalid Aunt Branka) is a foregone conclusion. They live in a small farm homestead and live off the land. Everyone has tasks to do, especially when paying summer visitors are expected. Co-operation is expected from each and there are minor conflicts. But their cohesion is born from a sense of having to survive on the farm. Integration is through work, discussion, planning the future on the farm and individual initiatives that benefit the family as a whole.
Bianka observes that her friend Sylvie’s family lacks that cohesion as they constantly battle over who should do this or that. A fresh scandal in the only town on the island involves two middle-aged couples who swap partners, to the detriment of one abused woman. Towns’ people stand by to help out. The main characters relate to other islanders at various levels. Bianka visits Tom the Hermit as he must have known her mysterious great-grandmother. And then there is the stalker, whose attentions lead Bianka to want to learn self-defense. When summer visitors arrive with a new guest, a lot of things start falling in place. One cave is the depository of the missing piece in Bianka’s family history.
How would you describe the interaction of story and setting in this story?
The setting interacts with the story because of the footprints of people of the past, but also because of the dramatic presence of the very physical aspects of the island: the waves that seem always the same yet always change and change the coastline, the cave that kept a secret for many decades, the south coast and north coast divided not only by a range of high hills but by who lives on the north coast that faces the mainland from where all comforts come, and those who live on the south coast where life is determined and ruled by the elements.
How much research did you do for the setting of this story, and what did that involve?
The research that went into the book was gathered long before the story took shape. Made trips to Kangaroo Island, usually lasting a week, over a number of years, read the local newspapers, studied vegetation, visited friends who live there and took note of the priorities of their lives. I scoured the few island stores for books and booklets by local authors, historians, naturalists, archeologists and so forth. Travel to me is learning from local people and sources.
To what extent would you describe the setting of this story typical or atypical of the settings in your fiction stories?
Both the above settings are typical of settings in my other fiction writings. Although some of my short stories are obviously taking place in a city, that is rather due to the subjects, i.e. street demonstrations at parliament house, a migrant language school, a hungry homeless man looking for food. Most stories are set in places remote from city life: tiny villages on a peninsula, in the ranges, on hill tops, in deserts. There are road stories and island stories. My novel for adults moves from the city to the hills and my major travel history is set in Tibet.
How do you usually decide on or develop a setting for your fiction stories?
I don’t decide on a setting. A setting grabs me and won’t leave me alone. Then it begins to people itself with characters that function and belong there, although they are fictional. Once that initial prompt from the landscape has taken place, stories write themselves.
To what extent do the settings of novels you read have an impact on why you read them, and why?
If I do read novels it is likely to be because of the setting. Why? Because that is another way of travelling. Even if I don’t like the characters or the way the plot unfolds, I may still read on because the setting is described from an insider’s point of view and that interests me.
Author website: http://secure.sawriters.org.au/general/lolo-houbein
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