Landfall: a novel.

Abstract

The Austrian philosopher, Karl Popper, a fugitive of Nazism in the 1930s, once declared that Utopianism “…with the best intentions of making heaven on earth…only succeeds in making it a hell…” (108), and certainly Utopia’s history is littered with failures fuelled largely from within. Yet the host of academic sources, as well as fictional, journalistic and popular history works on the ideal state that I have encountered in my research have been an indication to me of the perennial appeal of the subject, and the place it continues to hold in human imagination in defiance of our ‘faithless age.’ I have set out to write a novel loosely based on one of New Australia’s ‘impractical dreamers,’ Harry Taylor, attempting to set the dilemma of a liberal late-nineteenth century Socialist on his return to Australia within the context of his failed utopian dream and against the backdrop of a small Australian town fast betraying the co-operative nature which first encouraged him to settle there. I have found in many ways my exegesis and novel to cross paths with and echo each other. The history of ‘Mylong’ in which my main character, Harry Gardener, is portrayed belongs in part to myself as well, and I have taken the liberty of including parts of my personal experience in the exegesis where it seemed to relate to the ethos of the town which I, in a sense, inherited. Otherwise, while the vision of ‘Landfall’ may be mine, in tracing some of the story of Utopianism and linking it with white Australian history and the New Australia colony in Paraguay, I have tried to access as many late nineteenth and early twentieth century sources as possible to capture as naturally as possible the mood of a particular utopian adventure and time.