Hills End
IVAN SOUTHALL was born in Melbourne in 1921. His first published story appeared in the children’s pages of the Herald newspaper in 1933. Southall left school at the age of fourteen, following the death of his father, and worked in various jobs, including as a copy boy at the Herald.
He captained a Sunderland Flying boat in the RAAF during World War II and was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross after sinking a German U-boat. (Southall was always grateful that forty-one members of the crew were rescued.) Many of his early books were based on his wartime piloting experiences.
Southall met his first wife, Joy Blackburn, in England, and the couple returned to Australia after the war and lived in various semi-rural Melbourne suburbs. They had four children.
Southall’s first children’s book, Meet Simon Black, was published in 1950 and he went on to write more than thirty works for young adults and several for adults. Hills End, published in 1962, marked a new direction in his writing and in Australian children’s literature as he explored realism and a stream-of-consciousness style of narration.
Southall’s books were published widely internationally and he won more than twenty international awards including the Carnegie Medal in Literature and four Children’s Book Council of Australia awards in the 1960s and ’70s for Ash Road, To the Wild Sky, Bread and Honey and Fly West.
In 1976 Southall married Susan Stanton. In 1981 he was awarded an Order of Australia, and in 2003 the Dromkeen Medal for services to children’s literature. He died in 2008.
JAMES MOLONEY has written more than thirty books for young adults and children including The Book of Lies trilogy and A Bridge to Wiseman’s Cove, which won the CBCA Book of the Year in 1997. James lives in Brisbane.
jamesmoloney.com.au
ALSO BY IVAN SOUTHALL
Simon Black series (nine books)
Hills End
Ash Road
The Foxhole
To the Wild Sky
Sly Old Wardrobe, pictures by Ted Greenwood
Let the Balloon Go
Finn’s Folly
Chinaman’s Reef is Ours
Bread and Honey
Josh
Benson Boy
Head in the Clouds
What About Tomorrow
King of the Sticks
The Golden Goose
The Long Night Watch
Rachel
Blackbird
The Mysterious World of Marcus Leadbeater
Ziggurat
Fourteen works of non-fiction
Seven novels for adults
textclassics.com.au
textpublishing.com.au
The Text Publishing Company
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Copyright © Ivan Southall 1962
Introduction copyright © James Moloney 2013
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
First published by Angus & Robertson Publishers, Australia, 1962
This edition published by The Text Publishing Company 2013
Cover design by WH Chong
Page design by Text
Typeset by Midland Typesetting
Printed in Australia by Griffin Press, an Accredited ISO AS/NZS 14001:2004
Environmental Management System printer
Primary print ISBN: 9781922147004
Ebook ISBN: 9781922148049
Author: Southall, Ivan, 1921-2008 author.
Title: Hills end / by Ivan Southall; introduced by James Moloney.
Series: Text classics.
Target Audience: For children.
Subjects: Floods—Juvenile fiction.
Survival skills—Juvenile fiction.
Dewey Number: A823.4
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
Shelter Torn Away
by James Moloney
Hills End
HILLS End was first published in 1962 at a time when Australian children’s literature was entering a golden decade during which Ivan Southall’s novels would stand out along with those of Patricia Wrightson, Colin Thiele and a handful of other celebrated names. Our literary culture was ready for something new and so was Ivan after the post-wars years when he had ‘paid his dues’ as a writer in order to establish a career. Hills End marks his transition from fledging writer to assured master eager to challenge his intellect and his ambition with works of greater literary depth. Perhaps Southall sensed this emerging era when he writes, virtually on the first page:
How calm this morning was, and how beautiful. And how strangely moving, because this for Hills End was the most exciting day of the year.
Prophetic words these might be for the nation’s young who would soon have so many fine stories written for them, but they are cruelly ironic for the seven children who remain in the little town on the day of this particular story.
Like many of the writers of this period, Ivan Southall set his most important novels away from Australia’s growing cities, but he wasn’t interested in settler history or character built through stoic hard work and derring-do, not in the way his colleagues viewed them, anyway. He’d found a new landscape to explore—the interior world of his characters—and what makes him stand out is the integrity of the realism he offered the young reader in order to reveal it.
As a children’s author myself, I’ve often grappled with the perennial question—how do I get rid of the parents, so the kids can play the leading roles and make the crucial decisions? In the real world, after all, children are always in the care of some adult or other who bears the responsibility if something goes wrong. In Hills End, Southall deals with this quickly and ruthlessly by sending all but two of the town’s adults to the picnic races, then promptly kills off one of the remaining pair. This was radical in itself, for the character in question could easily have been incapacitated rather than terminated.
Instead the young reader is made to watch the indifferent hand of death enter the storm-damaged town where it remains to stalk the children when their parents cannot return to protect them. The swollen river is described as ‘some evil red monster writhing’ and a further menace roams unpredictably, ready to catch the unwary at any moment. Southall is being explicit, here, in a way that few before him had dared. He’s telling children that the real world is as indifferent as it is violent and what happened to Mr Tobias can happen to any of the children in this story. Further along, I was struck by a telling contrast with Colin Thiele’s treatment of children trapped in a tree by an angry bull. In Shadow on the Hill, Thiele turned the scenario into one of the funniest in children’s literature while in Hills End, the same predicament generates heart-stopping fear.
In children’s stories to that time, it was deemed acceptable to portray adults as nasty villains to be outwitted and as comic incompetents like Blyton’s Mr Plod. Parents could be misguided in their judgments and unsympathetic teachers were dime-a-dozen, but it seems that children weren’t considered ready for the truly flawed or unreliable guardian. Southall didn’t cross this line with the admirable Miss Godwin, either, but in getting inside her mind he shows her frailties and in particular her vulnerability. What was new here was her self-doubt which contributes to some disastrous actions on her part.
Southall’s ground-breaking theme in this novel is also presented early and in the starkest possible manner: that adults believe children cannot survive on their own, that without the experience, good sense and cour
age of grown-ups they must inevitably fall into helplessness and chaos. This hard-edged judgment is articulated in the first chapter by Ben Fiddler, the town’s dominant figure, and in doing so, he seems to open a parenthesis which is not closed until he and the other parents return at the story’s end. Everything that occurs between those markers proves the assumption to be utterly wrong. It is one of the novel’s strengths that the tyrannical Fiddler refuses to accept how false his assessment is, despite the evidence before his own eyes. But the children know, especially his son, Adrian, who has undergone a more searching test of character than any of the other children.
The concluding chapter of Hills End is a private nod between the young protagonists and the children who read it. It’s not that Southall is urging children to distrust their adult guardians, but more a recognition of their failings, no matter how much they love those in their charge. Don’t wait for grown-ups to give you credit for your fortitude, he is saying, because ultimately you only have to prove it to yourself to be certain such qualities lie within you. In trusting his readers with such honesty, Southall paved the way for John Marsden’s novels twenty-five years later. Marsden’s Tomorrow When the War Began series is in many ways a grand expansion of Southall’s scenario in Hills End.
I had not previously read Hills End, even though I am of an age to have read it fresh off the presses as an adolescent. I wasn’t much of a reader in those days. Later, when studying to become a school librarian, I thoroughly enjoyed Let the Balloon Go and the excellent Josh, but I found To the Wild Sky dwelt too much inside the minds of its protagonists for my liking. Reading Hills End now, I greatly admire the delicate balancing act the author pulls off between the physical threats and challenges that drive the narrative and the internalised fears and self-awareness of the children which manage to engage the reader with equal drama and tension. I am in awe of the way Southall switches point of view from character to character with no more than a line break to mark the transition, yet there is no confusion for the reader here as there surely would be in the hands of a less skilful writer. He sketches his seven characters so quickly and so clearly we know them instantly. Just as impressive is the way he uses these switches to tell the full breadth of the story, since his protagonists become separated, face different threats and through those challenges take very personal steps in their development as human beings.
Hills End was read and admired overseas as much as, some would say more than, it was in Australia. Undoubtedly this was due to the universality of its characters, themes and even the setting. Eyebrows might jump at that last suggestion, but there’s nothing particularly Australian about Southall’s hard-scrabble township clinging to forested hills. I’ve driven through similar dots on the map in Britain and the USA. In fact, Hills End seems little different from the Vermont town where Robert Newton Peck set his powerful novel A Day No Pigs Would Die which also features the puritan patriarchy manifest in Hills End.
Children everywhere will recognise themselves in the characters of Adrian and Paul, Frances and Gussie, and even the soft, overweight Christopher who doesn’t quite slough off his buffoonish ineptitude (which would have been a cop-out), yet we understand him and so we like him. Each is drawn with a mixture of humour, tender insight and at the same time an honest assessment of their weaknesses. Frances’ stubborn insistence that taking items from the abandoned store is stealing makes us want to strangle her, for example.
If there is one whom we take to heart more fully, it is Adrian. His lie has led to the children’s predicament. Only slowly do we discover the unforgiving household he has been raised in, which makes his own awareness of his folly unbearable. This is the story of his redemption, not in his father’s eyes, but his own. It is fitting then that the final scenes are viewed from his perspective and we are left with the deep impression that, before our eyes we have witnessed a boy become a man of significant potential.
It has been a pleasure for me, as both a reader and children’s writer, to offer comment on a masterwork like Hills End. I feel sure this new edition will find an appreciative audience among today’s young readers.
Author’s Note
When we came to live in this corner of the hills, years ago, everything was so beautifully quiet. It has livened up a little since then. Whether we should thank the children, or blame them, I’m not prepared to say. We brought Drew with us, of course, and soon Robbie arrived and, more recently, Elizabeth and Melissa. Other families have grown up round us, too.
Norma and Margaret’s father is a farmer. Sandra and Phillip also live on the land. Gary and Rhonda send their hardy dad off to the city every day where he makes aeroplanes. Gail, Barbara, and Barry live a mile down the road near the Bald Hills, and their father works at the timber mill—when he’s not beating me at chess.
There are other children, naturally, but if I mentioned them all I’d fill the page. They’re all part of this big family we have here, tucked away from the city’s clamour, and for every one of them I have written this book. I believe I have been promising to do it for years. Just one thing, don’t go imagining that it’s written about you—well, not all of it—perhaps a little here and a little there, but only the good parts, of course.
1
Hills End
There was no indication that Saturday morning that the little town of Hills End was doomed. The day even began beneath a hot and cloudless sky to the delight of Miss Elaine Godwin, the schoolmistress. Miss Godwin loved these mountains so much that she had scorned all promotion and all thought of transfer to a less remote community. She had remained at Hills End year after year with never more than three dozen pupils to teach.
She had set her alarm for half past six, that being early enough for her purpose, but she was out of bed before it rang. The morning heat and the excitement of the day ahead made it impossible for her to rest any longer. A few minutes before six she was kindling her kitchen stove, tidying away the books she had browsed through the night before, sweeping out the daily accumulation of dust, and then walking briskly down to the box nailed to the tree beside the track.
As usual, her morning milk was waiting for her—one generous pint—in the same enamelled billy-can that she had placed there almost every evening for nine years.
Below her, along the hillside and down to the fringe of the river flats, smoke was beginning to rise vertically from one chimney after another. How calm this morning was, and how beautiful. And how strangely moving, because this for Hills End was the most exciting day of the year.
Little Harvey Collins—he had always been known as little Harvey (with a small ‘l’)—had been awake since half past four.
That was Harvey all over. Everything had to be done to the extreme. When he was naughty no one could be naughtier. When he fought no one could fight harder. And when he was good he was so, so good that everyone started getting nervous. His mother would lock up the china and his father would break into a sweat.
At half past four Harvey had roved through the house, stumbling into doors, tripping over rugs, and disturbing everyone and being roundly abused for his trouble.
‘Harvey! For mercy’s sake switch off that light and go back to bed.’
‘Harvey! Is that the cupboard door? Close it at once. If you eat the lunches now they won’t be cut again.’
‘Harvey! If you dare touch that pie in the refrigerator I’ll scalp you. It’s for tomorrow’s dinner. Go back to bed!’
He had gone back to bed, grumbling and mumbling and nibbling at miserable old biscuits and a big apple and as wide awake as he could have been.
The sun had come up and he had dressed and had crept out to the back step and had sat there with his arm round Buzz, his dog, waiting impatiently for that houseful of lazy people to get out of bed.
Next door, beyond the stout electric fence, he could see Rickard’s cows wandering down to the milking shed, and still lower, along the track towards the distant house, Mr Rickard plodded home with his horse and cart after the mil
k round. Swinging from the axle, back and forth, was the hurricane lamp, still alight, and trotting behind as always was the old red collie dog.
Harvey sighed a deep, deep sigh of frustration and shifted himself to his swing and rocked backwards and forwards and saw that even the McLeods were up. Their house was down on the flats and Harvey could see the smoke from the chimney standing up like a pillar through the trees.
The McLeod children filled the house with chatter and laughter and excited squeals, and it was the responsibility of Frances, the eldest, to escort the younger ones to the bathroom to make sure they brushed their teeth and washed their faces and took the soap out of the water. To make sure that all the towels were hung back neatly on the rail, and that the taps were not dripping and that soap puddles were not everywhere over the floor. And then back to the bedrooms to ensure that they were all correctly dressed, with their underwear on and not left in the drawer, with all buttons done up, socks right side out, shoes on the proper feet and laced and polished, and hair brushed until it shone.
Frances handled them all more efficiently than her mother could have done. Her mother tired easily and lost her temper readily, but Frances was as patient as the day was long, always kindly, always firm, never seemed to be tired and very rarely lost her temper. Her mother couldn’t imagine what she would do without her. She was so proud of Frances that there wasn’t a soul in Hills End who didn’t know about it. It was a miracle that any of the grown-ups liked Frances at all, because so often they had to listen to her mother’s praises of her. It was Frances this, and Frances that. It was a wonder the girl didn’t wear a halo.
Of course, Frances was excited, too. For all her adult way she was still a schoolgirl. She was as impatient as the rest of them, as eager as the rest of them and as bright-eyed as the rest of them. She dressed in her prettiest frock and smiled at her reflection in the mirror.