''A Fringe of Leaves'' is the tenth published novel by the Australian novelist and 1973 Nobel Prize-winner,

Patrick White Patrick Victor Martindale White (28 May 1912 – 30 September 1990) was a British-born Australian writer who published 12 novels, three short-story collections, and eight plays, from 1935 to 1987. White's fiction employs humour, florid prose, ...

Plot

A young Cornish woman, Ellen Roxburgh, travels to the Australian colony of

Van Diemen's Land Van Diemen's Land was the colonial name of the island of Tasmania used by the British during the European exploration of Australia in the 19th century. A British settlement was established in Van Diemen's Land in 1803 before it became a sepa ...

(now "Tasmania") in the early 1830s with her older husband, Austin, to visit his brother Garnet Roxburgh. After witnessing the brutalities of

, the Roxburghs embark on their return trip to England on the ''Bristol Maid''. But the ship runs aground on the coral reef off the coast of what is now Queensland. Ellen is the only survivor from the leaky vessel in which the passengers and crew travel to the shore. She is rescued by the Aboriginal people of the island, and she later meets Jack Chance, a convict who has escaped from

Moreton Bay Moreton Bay is a bay located on the eastern coast of Australia from central Brisbane, Queensland. It is one of Queensland's most important coastal resources. The waters of Moreton Bay are a popular destination for recreational anglers and are ...

(now Brisbane), the brutal penal settlement to the south. It is Chance who escorts her through the dangerous coastal territory south to the outskirts of the settlement, but who refuses to accompany her further and returns to his exile. She returns to "civilisation" transformed and tormented by her experience with Garnet in Van Diemen's Land, with the Aboriginal people, and with Chance. The novel sets in sharp relief the distinctions between men and women, whites and blacks, the convicts and the free, and English colonists and Australian settlers. The contrast between Ellen's rural Cornish background and the English middle class she has married into is also highlighted.

Historical references

The shipwreck and rescue parts of the novel reflect the experiences of

Eliza Fraser Eliza Anne Fraser (c.1798 – 1858) was a Scottish woman who was aboard a ship that wrecked at an island off the coast of Queensland, Australia, on 22 May 1836, and who claimed she was taken in by the Badtjala (Butchella) people. She later wrote ...

, who was also shipwrecked on the island that bears her name, met with an escaped convict who had lived alongside the island's Aboriginal people, and married a "Mr Jevons". She, however, eventually returned to the UK. White's novel is (arguably recursively) often cited about Fraser Island and Eliza Fraser.

References

1976 Australian novels Novels by Patrick White Novels set in Queensland Novels set in the 1830s Jonathan Cape books {{1970s-hist-novel-stub