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Deficiency Bill in Western Australia, 1929,entitled 'Preventing the Unfit from Breeding.'This thorough and lucid expose, whilemaintaining the stance of detachment suggestedin the claim that 'this essay will examine thebackground to the introduction of this bill andthe reasons for its defeat in the legislature in 1929'is deadly in its coolly ironic condemnation of theattitudes uncovered. All the benightedarguments about Eugenics, compulsorysterilisation and segregation, are skilfully putinto perspective by quoting Arthur Lovekin,whose concern that the better classes were notbreeding enough and the lowest orders breedingtoo much was poetically stated thus: 'we are notperpetuating our species from the ripe fruitswhich is to be found in the uppermost parts ofthe tree, but from the weeds which grow apaceat the bottom.'It is good to see that the general mix of thebook is enriched by at least one essay drawingits material from imaginative literature. VeronicaBrady, in 'The Struggle against Forgetfulness'examines the theme of childhood in the novelsof Randolph Stow. 'The literary text,' she writes,'offers access to what is otherwise inaccessible,but vital, to the historian - the lost, potentdisorder of the forces of childhood experience. . . The language of the historian is thelanguage of alienation, precise, universal andtechnical: literature attempts to recharge thelanguage, to fill it anew with existential content.It does this by means of the symbol, the languageof experience.' She goes on to demonstrate howthe work of Randolph Stow is particularlyvaluable in this context, and provides a powerfulargument for the recognition of the enormousimportance of reading imaginative literature inharness with historical material to gain a deeperunderstanding of both.A better acquaintance with literary textsmight well repair some of the havoc wrought bythe professional jargon of some of the newerdisciplines. For example, Patricia Baines'material about Nyungar childhood experienceswhilst interesting, is marred by linguisticclumsiness in trying to force a blend ofaboriginal concepts and jargon as in 'Nyungarchildhood as remembered experience is, then,the invocation of ties, not to the past in a generalsense, but to those particular others who, fromthe space of intimacy, gave life meaning andshape. For the past as artefact of recollection isalways mediated through a series ofrelationships '.Both Phyllis Garrick's piece on Children ofthe Poor and Patricia Crawford's work on theLady Gowrie Centre display an odd lack ofperspective. Garrick's example of child abuse,complete with family attitudes to violence andincest (drawn from 1829-1880) are strikinglysimilar to our own contemporary experience, yetthere seems to be no awareness of this, and theyare treated as something peculiar to another age.Crawford, on the other hand, concentrating onthe conflicts and incongruities of attitudesbetween the staff at the Lady Gowrie centres andtheir largely working-class clientele does sothroughout with an accusatory undertone. Sheresolutely disregards the fact that communityattitudes half a century ago were so differentfrom our own era that a more appropriateresponse might have been that of ananthropologist dispassionately investigating analien culture. Seeing the conflict primarily as aproblem of class, i.e. working-class childrenstunted by a middle-class system seems toobscure the more basic concern of children beingstunted by adults.Such minor flaws do not detract from theenormous interest of all these essays, and thebook opens up new insights, charts somerelatively unknown territory and points to areasawaiting further research in a rich and rewardingfield.Margot LukeDorothy Johnson, Maralinga, My Love: ANovel, McPhee Gribble/Penguin Books, 1988,$12.99.In October 1957, a massive atomic test, the lastin a series, was undertaken by the BritishGovernment at Maralinga in South Australia.The following day the Canberra Times reportedthat a cloud of radioactive dust would travelseveral times around the world before dispersing.This and other press reports at the time seemedto be at pains to minimise public fear over thetests, describing damage no more serious thansome singed hairs on the legs of a servicemanstanding several miles away from the blast110WESTERLY, No.2, JUNE, 1989