Poet Bernard O'Reilly's prose was arguably better than his verse, which is no real criticism apart from damning by faint praise.
O'Reilly's autobiographical trilogy Green Mountains, Cullenbenbong and Over the Hills encompass staggering imagery-laden stories of a pioneer family's new-century Queensland mountain-top selection (land granted by the government on the proviso that it be developed) in virtual jungle; early access to such via a sixteen-mile uphill (virtually cliff) walk prior to a track being cut in the bush to allow avenue on horseback.
O'Reilly's language is old-school baroque without slipping into provinciality. His sentences are musical journeys showered in punctuation. People don't write like this any more. A semi-colon could be a truck.
... the change of seasons, each with its own attractions and each eagerly looked forward to in turn; Spring with its coming of warmth and flowers, young willow leaves and baby animals; the return and nesting of birds; Summer, when eagerly we looked forward to the first roll of thunder and the first good storm; the ripening of melons and cherries, peaches, tomatoes and cucumbers; school holidays, Christmas, Santa Claus; Autum and the apples; the hay; harvest of corn and pumpkins; Easter Holidays; the first yellow leaves on the willows and poplars; red sunsets that burned their beauty into your soul; Winter and a new red woolly sweater, thick and warm and smelling of mothballs;the wild excitement over the first big frost and the spang of breaking ice; the snow on the Divide, the rabbit-trapping season, lanterns winking around the velvet hills; light wagons laden with racks of swinging bunnies going off to the freezing works; the great old chimney hanging with pieces of bacon curing in the smoke; the storeroom with casks of thick rich beef and pork; stars that glittered like jewels and great white planets that cast shadows as you went; and perhaps too the splendour of Aurora Australis.
Nineteen semi-colons in one sentence, and I didn't (notice the ellipse at the start) even quote the whole thing.
According to Australian philosopher David Stove, 'The autobiography of R.M. Williams, Beneath Whose Hand, is well worth reading. That of A. B. Facey’s A Fortunate Life is much more so. But O'Reilly's autobiography - meaning ... his trio of books - is far better still.'
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Green Mountains and Cullenbenbong, by Bernard O'Reilly, W.R. Smith and Paterson Pty Ltd, Kemp Valley, Brisbane 1949 (My copy, found in a second-hand bookstore at $3, is a first-edition print of the first two books in the trilogy.)
I once suggested on this website that Martin Boyd's Martin Boyd's The Cardboard Crown should be on the syllabus of every Australia high school. The same applies to O'Reilly's work.
UPDATE: Weird random formatting and literals fixed (post written this morning in HTML on a city-bound train using a tiny phone the screen of which I can barely see. Also my fingers are too big for the touch-screen keyboard: human hands are currently evolving into chicken's feet with all the tiny tapping.)
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