Sunday, February 16, 2025

Review – Rachel

Recent stories

Rebecca Rowlings
Rebecca Rowlings
Rebecca Rowlings has always been a voracious reader. Apart from three years in Sydney at university, she has spent her life living in rural and regional areas. She currently lives on Wiradjuri country, teaches at the local high school, runs a secondhand bookstore and furniture restoration business with her amazing husband, and loves being a wife and mother, although there is a downside in the lack of time to read as much as she once could. With an Arts degree majoring in English literature, a background in newspaper journalism and more than a decade spent as an English teacher, she enjoys sharing her insights into some of the books she is able to find time to read (usually late at night).

“Rachel” is the culmination of a forty year journey for author Jeff McGill.

As his author’s note at the start of the book explains, Jeff first “met” Rachel Kennedy in 1982 as a teenager, when his grandfather Arnold handed him her newspaper obituary from 1930. Intrigued by the description of “a noted horsewoman … who took part in many daring exploits”, Jeff’s “countless conversations” with his grandfather over the next six years form the heart of this book.

Rachel was Arnold’s grandmother, and thus Jeff’s great-great-grandmother. She was born into and lived most of her life in a world that no longer exists – a world that Jeff’s meticulous research brings to life here.

Rachel was born in 1845 in the Warrumbungle mountains in the north west of NSW. Apart from a couple of years spent in the goldfields near Mudgee as a child, she lived her 85 years in and around the Warrumbungles. Jeff takes us through the challenges of her young life: the loss of her mother at twelve which marked the end of her childhood; riding with her brothers to catch and break wild brumbies to sell; living in a slab timber hut with a dirt floor and sheepskin beds. Jeff describes a western frontier life that evokes for me the representations of the wild west we see from Hollywood, but lived right here in Australia.

Any description of colonial life must acknowledge the experiences of the Aboriginal people of that time, in a way that twentieth century history books often did not. Jeff does this deftly and with sensitivity, even as he tells a story centred around a white woman. “But the real custodians of the range were the Gamilaraay (Kamilaroi) … it held their spirit … Now it had all been snatched away … That truth cannot be got around. Neil and Jane’s fresh start had been built on an act of dispossession.”

The way Jeff includes well rounded Aboriginal characters such as Rachel’s lifelong friend Mary Jane adds depth and authenticity to his narrative; this is not a romanticised colonial tale of white triumph over the wilderness.

However, the arc of Rachel’s life does encompass the transformation of the land under white management. The Warrumbungles she was born in were the same landscape that had been walked on by the Gamilaraay for thousands of years. By the end of her life, the land around the core of the mountain range had been transformed. By the first decade of the twentieth century, “countless trees lay rotting as tens of thousands of acres of cypress forest … were ‘rung’ to make way for crop fields.”

Jeff’s perspective is clearly shaped by Rachel, who valued the wetlands, trees and waterholes that created a “lonely outpost of green” amid the surrounding crop and grazing lands. Rachel lived to see the land around her irreversibly changed, although thankfully the heart of the Warrumbungles was preserved as a national park.

This is the story of a “wild colonial girl” who bore twelve children and raised ten to adulthood. Rachel was married twice, but remained an independent woman (albeit within the constraints of the times).

I spent a lot of time flicking back and forth between the photos and the story to see the faces of the characters and the places mentioned. I went back again and again to the earlier photos as I got to know Rachel and her family through the narrative, and began to match up names and faces with the family tree and the events described by Jeff.

He brings Rachel to life with imagined thoughts and feelings, such as when she married Robert McGill: “Rachel stood nervously in front of Reverend Gunther … She looked lovingly at Robert.” And again when they lost their first child: “Rachel knew she needed to pick herself up and move on one foot at a time.” This takes the story beyond a historical biography into a deeply personal presentation of Rachel’s life.

Jeff weaves Rachel’s story together from stories passed down in the family (especially his grandfather Arnold, who spent a lot of time with Rachel when he was a boy), as well as historical sources and geographical information.

I really enjoyed “Rachel”, where Jeff pulls a wide range of sources together into a cohesive, engaging narrative that not only invites us into Rachel’s life, but gives insight into a time in Australian history of rapid and enormous change.

Author: Jeff McGill
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 9781760879983
Buy through Booktopia

This book review is supported by the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund.

KEEP IN TOUCH

Sign up for updates from Australian Rural & Regional News

Manage your subscription

We don’t spam! Read our privacy policy for more info.