Lines, William J. 1952-
(William John Lines)

PERSONAL:

Born February 3, 1952, in Perth, Australia; son of William and Nancy Lines. Ethnicity: "Australian." Education: University of Western Australia, B.A., 1973.

ADDRESSES:

Home—4 Mowbray Ct., Doncaster East, Victoria 3109, Australia.

CAREER:

Writer. University of Canberra, visiting fellow, 1995. Also worked as carpenter, contractor, and homesteader.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Australian Council literature fellow, 1993, 1996, 2000-01; Christina Smith Award for Community History, 1994, for An All-Consuming Passion: Origins, Modernity, and the Australian Life of Georgiana Molloy; writer's fellowship, Veruna Writer's Centre, 1995; creative arts fellowship for literature, Australian Capital Territory Cultural Development Program, 1996; Bundanon writer's fellowship, 1998.

WRITINGS:

Taming the Great South Land: A History of the Conquest of Nature in Australia, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1991.

An All Consuming Passion: Origins, Modernity, and the Australian Life of Georgiana Molloy, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1994.

A Long Walk in the Australian Bush, University of Georgia Press (Athens, GA), 1998.

False Economy: Australia in the Twentieth Century, Fremantle Arts Centre Press (Fremantle, Australia), 1998.

Open Air: Essays, New Holland (Sydney, Australia), 2001.

Patriots: Defending Australia's Natural Heritage, 1946-2004, University of Queensland Press (St. Lucia, Queensland, Australia), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Taming the Great South Land: A History of the Conquest of Nature in Australia begins with William J. Lines's account of how the continent was formed over 200-million years ago. Lines relates how the Aboriginals adapted and developed their agriculture practices and discusses how they were treated when Westerners arrived. Sally Gregory Kohlstedt wrote in the American Historical Review that Lines's descriptions are "not for the squeamish: rape, mutilation, contamination of food and water, target practice on the open range, and bondage of all sorts." Colonial capitalism depleted the numbers of whales and seals and exhausted minerals, timber, and grazing lands. The new arrivals introduced animals and plants, including sheep and the rabbits, that accelerated the destruction. Kohlstedt stated: "Lines marshals facts well, inverts traditional heroic stories so that triumph becomes tragedy (rarely the inverse), and writes with perception and vigor."

Lines also provides a history of resource development, settlement, and agriculture. "British atom bomb tests in the outback in the 1950s, and recent mineral development that is turning Australia into a ‘world quarry,’ bring the story to the present," wrote Terry Fenge in Alternatives. "Environmental values, Aboriginal rights, and common decency are shunted aside. The result is a continent devastated in less than 200 years." Lines writes that Australians gave up their natural resources in exchange for alignment with Britain, then the United States. With little opposition, development continued without debate. Fenge concluded that Taming the Great South Land "does not offer a way out of the mess, unless one accepts a call to arms as in itself a programme." Lines dedicated the book to Earth First activists.

Peter Conrad wrote in the Observer that Australia's interior "is seen not as a primordial darkness, like Joseph Conrad's Africa, but as a scorching, apathetic emptiness. … Currently, the seepage from mines poisons the Great Barrier Reef, the Tasmanian highlands have been drowned in order to supply nonexistent industries with hydroelectricity, and the rain forests of Victoria are chipped away because Japanese corporations hunger for cheap cellulose. … In this vindictive, psychotic history, the modest figure of Georgiana Molloy functions for Lines as a redeemer."

An All Consuming Passion: Origins, Modernity, and the Australian Life of Georgiana Molloy chronicles the life of an Australian botanist. Molloy was born Georgiana Kennedy in the early nineteenth century in England. She was a pious young woman, very different from her family, and because of this she chose to return to Scotland to live at Roseneath with the Dunlops, whose daughters were very much like herself. Helen Elliott wrote in the Australian Book Review that Lines "is excellent on historical and philosophical context. … He is particularly good on the self-justification and moralising of the English in their greed for land and everything on it." Georgiana Kennedy was unmarried at twenty-four. Elliott felt she "was probably far too clever to attract most men." She did meet and marry Captain John Molloy, who was twice her age and striking out to seek his fortune in Australia. In 1829 they settled in Augusta, Western Australia, 200 miles south of the Swan River colony, where John became the first local magistrate. The Captain was a good and loving husband, and Molloy's letters indicate that she returned his affection, but not his passion. Elliott wrote that Molloy's passion "was for her botany, her God, with the starving soul of a passionate woman necessarily deprived and restricted by circumstance, with James Mangles, the London horticulturist whom she had never met, but who asked her for botanical specimens."

Molloy conceived eight times. She lost all but four of her children through miscarriage and death. She bore her first child in the pouring rain and watched him die. Her only son was drowned in a well at age nineteen months. She was faced with raising her children, performing clerical duties connected with her husband's position as magistrate, and the chores of the household, while her husband was often away for months at a time. Molloy treated the Aboriginals with kindness. Elliott wrote that "her attitude was, undoubtedly, patronising, but compared to the fiendish behavior of her neighbors and fellow settlers … Georgiana was remarkable." Molloy saw the beauty of the land and created gardens of Australian, South African, and British flowers. Captain Mangles, a retired British naval officer, asked her to collect seeds for him. Molloy and Mangles corresponded for five years. She collected, mounted, and wrote descriptions of the seeds and dried specimens of every plant in the region and sent them to England. They were classified and distributed to English gardeners. She had originally hesitated to take on the project, thinking herself unworthy, but her work brought her fame in the world of botany.

Writing in the American Historical Review, Kay Schaffer observed that Lines "skillfully manages to draw readers into the larger political, religious, cultural, and philosophical debates of the time." Schaffer noted that Lines writes of the conflicts between the settlers and the native Nyungar. The Nyungar coexisted with the land, whereas the settlers sought to control it. "For Aboriginal people, the world came into existence through the actions of their spirit ancestors who inhabited the Dreaming, which provided the means and meaning of life," said Schaffer. The Aboriginals were connected to the Dreaming through the places where they had been born, lived, and died. "White settlement destroyed it," wrote Schaffer. By 1837 the Nyungar were stealing food in order to survive. This caused the settlers to rise up against them, resulting in the mass killings of these native peoples. Schaffer called the book "an illuminating and incisive interdisciplinary study."

A Long Walk in the Australian Bush is Lines's account of his 400-mile walk on the Bibbulmun Trail in southwestern Australia. He provides a history of forestry and emphasizes his points by relating incidents that occurred throughout the walk. Library Journal reviewer Stephanie Papa wrote that "the historical and scientific lectures slow down the story," but said "the descriptive passages are charming."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Alternatives, September-October, 1994, Terry Fenge, review of Taming the Great South Land: A History of the Conquest of Nature in Australia, p. 39.

American Historical Review, June, 1993, Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, review of Taming the Great South Land, pp. 931-932; February, 1998, Kay Schaffer, review of An All Consuming Passion: Origins, Modernity, and the Australian Life of Georgiana Molloy, p. 264.

Australian Book Review, April, 1994, Helen Elliott, review of An All Consuming Passion, pp. 19-20.

Library Journal, October 1, 1998, Stephanie Papa, review of A Long Walk in the Australian Bush, p. 124.

Observer, August 7, 1994, Peter Conrad, review of Taming the Great South Land, p. 18.