Neil Robinson: The River Of No Return

Reviewed by GORDON McLAUCHLAN

More than 50 years ago, Neil Robinson, a young journalist working on the New Zealand Weekly News, began researching a history of the Scottish immigrants who had settled in Waipu, north of Auckland, after trying first Nova Scotia and then Australia. The result was Lion of Scotland, a history of the travels and travails of these people, a book deservedly honoured when it was published in 1952.

What no one outside his family knew was that during the research period, Robinson had dashed off a novel set among the Waipu settlers. He had typed it on the small oblongs of newsprint that newspapermen used in those days to write their pieces. He then put it in a drawer and told his wife he wouldn't bother offering it to a publisher.

Robinson went on to become one of New Zealand's best known magazine feature writers, and rose to become literary editor of the Weekly News before his appointment as New Zealand editor for international publishers, Hodder and Stoughton.

He became an astute judge of others' fiction but, although he titivated his own novel on two or three occasions over the years, it remained unseen by others until after his death two years ago - apart from some borer in his desk drawer who developed a taste for it.

Now, one of his sons has had The River of No Return published, and one wonders what might have been had Robinson concentrated on his own fiction instead of on the work of others.

This is the novel of a young man in the context of his time. I'm sure the author understood its limitations. The hero is a young man, Donald McKinnon, who works as a bushman until his best mate is killed in an accident. Troubled and restless, Donald joins another Waipu character on a cutter that trades with Auckland, where he is involved in an unhappy incident with some urban scoundrels.

Next the boat visits the New Hebrides, where he comes into contact with European blackbirders, as slave-traders in the Pacific were called. The experience persuades Donald he should return to Waipu, marry his childhood sweetheart and take up farming.

The story is an easy read, ripe with the influence of authors we all read as boys in the middle of the 20th century, such as Jeffrey Farnol and John Buchan, whose characters were heroes not only in the literary sense but in the sense of being upstanding, open-hearted, strong and righteous. In a phrase, undeviatingly good. And so The River of No Return is melodramatic, stagey in dialogue and has too pat an ending.

But what makes it different from the generality of fiction of that time is its serious attempt to deal with moral and religious issues as they affected the Waipu settlers. Donald wrestles with a sense of outrage when a young woman is called out in church by the Rev Norman McLeod, because she has borne a child out of wedlock.

He tries to fight his way out of a moral muddle involving sin and compassion. (McLeod was the actual leader of the group which may have given Robinson pause when considering publication. Even if he had used another name, the character could have been none other.)

Donald asks himself if the time has come to modify the rigidity of McLeod, who has given the settlers the strength to go on since they left their Highland homes many years before. Then comes the death of Donald's close friend, which he thinks he predicted in a dream, followed by discussions with a complex Scottish missionary dealing with blackbirders and primitive villagers in the New Hebrides.

The speeches are too long and perhaps the characters are too polite, but the issues are very real, and readers will wonder how Robinson would have developed as a novelist from this salad days start had he worked hard and given himself time.

Samahani Press, $34.95

* Gordon McLauchlan is a Herald columnist.