Natura' Violence

On my second category of "Natural Violence" I propose to say very little. A comparison with Australia might again be fruitful. Because of the physical nature of that continent, the extremes of climate, the harshness of its desert interior, and the great privations suffered by the first explorers, the struggle of man against nature has been a recurring theme for painters and writers. Such legends as those of Burke and Wills haunt the Australian imagination. A novel like Patrick White's Voss makes brilliant use of this rich heritage. We have nothing comparable; and the best passages about human endurance and determination in the face of natural hazards are to be found in the plain factual accounts of some of our early explorers and pioneers.

Yet three obvious challenges remain: the sea, the bush, and the mountains. They are still the proving-ground for many young New Zealanders, and there must be a few of us who have not lost friends who came to grief in confronting them. The mark of these three permanent features of our environment is heavily scored in our fiction as a continual counterpart to the easy comfort of suburban and small town living. Not too far from the lighted window panes are always the bare peaks, the lonely bush, and some of the stormiest waters in the world. We must all remember scattered episodes that point up this particular confrontation: the lonely bush farm in John Mulgan's Man Alone, and Johnson's battle for survival in the dripping forests of the Kaimana was; or Forbush's ordeal among the skuas and penguins in the isolation of his Antarctic hut. The novelist who has concentrated on this theme of natural hazards is Ruth France, in two convincing stories of man against sea and flood The Race, and Ice Cold River which hold their suspense with no hint of strain or exaggeration. But the field remains underworked: for example, the high drama of mountain climbing in New Zealand that one might have expected long before this, is still to be written.