Salt River Road is a significant book in the history of Western Australian literary culture.
It’s the emotionally compelling story of a mother’s death— which plays out in the opening pages— and the aftermath and effects on her children. Two of these children, Rose and Frank, narrate the story through prose and poetry. It’s surprising how well this structural combination works in the context of grief, and as a reader, I found my eyes welling with tears on several occasions.
In Rose and Frank, we find understandably lost souls, each doing their best to survive amidst unimaginable sadness. Indeed, this question forms the crux of the narrative: what can we hold onto when we lose the ones we love? How do we find fragments of who they once were? And perhaps most poignantly, where do we go once we’ve lost someone who feels like home?
It’s a meditative, carefully paced journey, almost a two-part lullaby between Frank and Rose that takes what might otherwise be maudlin and turns it into a relatable, powerful story of familial and historical loss.
And yet, that’s not what makes Salt River Road a book of great significance. Instead, it’s something much more sublime. It’s the adage, write what you know, drawn to its most logical conclusion.
Many questions are asked by this text, such as (in Schmidt’s own words), How can non-Aboriginal writers include Noongar characters in their fiction in a manner that avoids misrepresentation, cultural appropriation, stereotyping and tokenism? And perhaps, more poignantly, as a non-Indigenous writer, should she be referring to their people and culture in her work at all?
Schmidt finds her answer to that second question in the express permission of those elders consulted during the writing and revision of this book. Regarding the first question, it’s clear to any reader that this book is fuelled by delicate, inclusive curiosity regarding intercultural dialogues. While Schmidt is a keen observer of human character, she’s also suitably gentle around sometimes opposing and often contrasting realities and relationships with history and the land. And, of course, given Australian history, there’s at times a necessary correction to the sins of Australians past and their willingness to rewrite history to suit their own needs, egos, and racial biases.
While meaningfully mapping reconciliation is a huge demand for a single text, Salt River Road is still a welcome step towards greater cross-cultural understanding from the non-Indigenous side. More importantly, it’s a necessary recalibration for potential motivations for those non-Indigenous authors choosing to explore Indigenous cultures.
In Schmidt’s case, it’s as simple as the desire to learn, to understand, and perhaps to hope for a less-divided Australian cultural history. Or, as she writes herself, albeit in a different context, within the text:
Ah, there it is. There’s the why.
Salt River Road is a significant book at a critical time in the history of Australian literary culture. Here’s hoping it’s the first of many willing to be brave and open in examining what was and what might be within our nation’s history and those stories we have yet to write.