For three long years, Ingvar walks across the strikingly diverse landscape of rural Victoria in Australia – across “a wide treeless plateau of rolling hills and swirling mist”, under “thin clouds [as they] skated across a full moon”, and through “remnants of rainforest and dappled light”. He perceives himself to be a severely flawed man. Stops are brief as “to remain stationary was to dwell”. Seasonal fruit-picking provides the cash to keep moving. Sleep is brief and full of dreams until his favourite time of day, “the thin skirt of dawn”, spurs him on. Only as he walks does he feel a part of the world.
Incrementally, we pick up snippets of Ingvar’s past and the reason for his fear of both people and memories. There was a house in the city, a wife and a daughter, an occupation that paid him to study the landscape he loves. A tragedy is alluded to before the walking began.
As he moves away from the Great Dividing Range toward the sea, Ingvar spies the vaguely familiar outline of a house in the bush. He sees the chance for a short respite from his extreme fatigue in a neighbouring weed-covered banana shed.
In the following days, he meets Hilda, an older, recently widowed, gritty and forthright farmer – and Ingvar’s temporary landlord. She’s “tough and lean with the hint of something softer”, and despite a rocky start, a symbiotic relationship of sorts evolves between the two. Hilda provides small comforts in the form of food and clothing. Ingvar repays her by repairing the almost unusable driveway up the steep slope to her farmhouse ‒ an exhausting job. Alone in the house, Hilda talks with her dead husband (and gets answers). Her story is worthy of a book of its own, as are those of other colourful characters who inhabit the neighbourhood. There’s Mick, with “the air of someone who had been incarcerated for something minor”, Hemingway, with “tanned skin striking against the yellow of his dress”, and Ginger, “like a postcard from God”.
Portions of the story are written from different characters’ points of view, giving the reader the notion of seamlessly completing a jigsaw.
After three years of striding through all weathers and terrains and with little communication with others, Ingvar has grave difficulty confronting people. “Words have become abstract, almost unrecognisable concepts.” It is even more difficult to accept strangers’ small kindnesses, yet those kindnesses may serve to outweigh the hatred that Ingvar feels for himself. And after all, why do horses run? Are they running away or are they running towards something? In which direction is Ingvar headed?
It is no surprise to learn that Sydney-based debut author Cameron Stewart is an award-winning short-fiction writer, a film scriptwriter and director, and an actor in theatre, film and television. In his own words, his writing is informed by “diversity of place and an interest in flawed characters trying to do their best”.
The story’s language is highly visual and a homage to rural Australia. The words are steeped in beautiful descriptions of flora and fauna, the best example of which is a short prologue describing the discovery of a rare subterranean orchid, made up of “a series of creamy white bracts, splotched with purple [with a] sweet smell that resembled vanilla”. It is tempting to say that this story would make a very good film, but then, who needs a film when we’ve read the book? l
