Byron Bay Holiday Guide Archives :. The Byronic Canon

by Peter Barclay

A far greater 'syncronicity' is that the sixth Baron of Byron was known as a lover of ocean swimming and exotic cultures. His legendary cathartic dip, as the recently drowned Percy Bysshe Shelley's corpse burst upon the pyre, would see him comfortably round Julian Rocks and returned to shore in time for the wake or a ritual warrior 'rebirthing' in the hills. Byron would have loved Byron.

And who, after spending a warm summer's night in Byron, would not have an inkling of what the romantic adventurer meant when, in Don Juan, he wrote:

What men call gallantry, and gods adultery,
is much more common where the climate's sultry.

So, it's settled, Byron was named after the legendary Romantic poet! Besides, if we take a closer look at the map of Byron, things become 'curiouser and curiouser.' It would appear that some rampaging retiring professor (or perhaps a ravaged student) of English literature was given carte blanche with street names. There's Manfred Street presumably named after Byron's poem, a romantic manifesto if ever there was one - 'There is an order/of mortals on the earth, who do become/Old in their youth, and die ere middle age.' Byron died aged 36. But I digress.

Then, there's Brooke and Browning Streets, Burns, Butler and Carlyle, there's Cooper, Cowper, Dryden, Evans, Fletcher, and Ben Jonson, and there's Keats, Kingsley, Shelley, then Shirley, Tennyson and finally, another contemporary of Byron, Wordsworth. And, just for good measure, a few Aussies as well. The obligatory Paterson, of course, with Lawson, Gilmore and Kendall.

A theory could usefully be advanced relating the 'throng of flesh and blood' writers coming to Byron in recent years to an unconscious desire to have their names entered into the Byronic Canon (especially as such canons are being swept aside in the hallowed halls of academe).

But what is a theory without exemplar? How can one disguise an exercise in name-dropping? Who make up this "throng of flesh and blood?" Given a desire not to exclude anyone, through ignorance or oversight, from potential consideration for inclusion in the Canon, your humble guide wishes to acknowledge that the following is at best a patchwork map, an anecdotal list, snapshots, largely confined to the post-Aquarian period and focussing in on recent events, namely, the inaugural Byron Bay Writers' Festival.Richard Neville has continued to visit since the Aquarius Festival in the hills of Nimbin, behind Byron. Michael Wilding wrote a de Quincey-like hallucinatory novella, Pacific Highway, which could just as easily be sub-titled Confessions of a Mushroom Eater, capturing the feel of the place ten years after.

It is Byron where Paul Lang from Robert Drewe's The Bodysurfers meets Faye who has never been 'in love' only 'in lust.' Drusilla Modjeska is reputed to have completed the final draft of The Orchard in the hills behind Byron. Linda Javins drops into Byron from 'time to time.' Bob Ellis was born just across the road in Lismore. Craig McGregor used to live here, Commentator, Mungo MacCallum, playwright, Janis Balodis, and novelist, Di Morrissey still do. Graham Freudenberg, the 'doyen' of Australia's political speechwriters, will soon move here. And Gillian Mears, Vogel winner and recipient of the Commonwealth Book Prize (Pacific Region) is just down the road outside Grafton. And, that's just scratching the surface!

In recent years a Writer's Centre has been set up. More 'flesh and blood' writers visit now. What about the idea of a festival to celebrate writing, especially Australian writing, and perhaps influence the future choice of street names. Rob Drewe read from The Drowner, before it was published, advocating optimism about ourselves, then and now. Later, he said, "There's only about three places in Australia outside the cities where you could hold a writer's festival dealing with 'deep down things' and Byron's one of them..." and then plunged into the surf, Byron-style. It was July, the middle of winter. But, it was a Byron winter! Helen Garner, after knocking us out with her unblinking gaze and seering honesty, advised "Keep it simple! Don't run simultaneous sessions! Think about the relationship between the writer and the audience..." David Malouf, who writes the most exquisite and sayable sentences in contemporary English and loves the clumps of local hoop pine because images of holidays as Byron, away from 12 Edmonstone Street when he was a boy, come swimming back, lent his considerable and consistent support.

One year and some logistics later, the inaugural Byron Festival was born.

And it was fantastic! Fifty writers and, over three days in late July, four thousand plus audience members met to celebrate and reflect on writing. Bob Debus recommended that we work on a new crop of literary scandals for the new millenium. Humphrey McQueen argued for the future of Australia through a reconciled understanding of its past. Rodney Hall spoke about how 'one-sided' our stories about the past were and was subsequently besieged by admirers. Peter Thompson read from his new book for children. Matt Condon and Graham Freudenberg held the bar up. Then, Dorothy Porter said 'who's your favourite poet' and enthused 'work on what's hot for you.'

Books were launched - Clare Mendes Race Across Burning Soil, Jim Williams' Letters From Byron, North Coast Poets: Volume 1 and Nettie Hilton's Whisper Who Dares. Films were previewed - Thank God He met Lizzie - by Alexandra Long. Australia's biggest selling children's writer, John Marsden, talked to our kids. John Tranter, Malouf, Hall and Porter read their poetry along with the poets of the north coast - it was like the Vietnam War days. Malouf read from 12 Edmonstone Street, Garner from True Stories, Drewe from The Drowner. Kate Grenville's Workshop in Fiction was besieged.

The cross over between biography and fiction went under the microscope with McQueen, Patti Miller and Kristen Williamson, David Williamson talked with Peter Castaldi about writing film. Lyn Tranter and Lynne Spender told us about how to get published and after one of our best comic writers, Matt Condon, waxed eloquent on the politics of the pool, then over a long lunch Bob Ellis and Mungo MacCallum held forth on the peculiarities and peccadillos of Politics and the Press Club. Afterwards, Anita Heiss, Koori satirist, put them to the test - just whose country is it anyway? There's a demand now to be included in the Byron canon: Malouf Esplanade, Garner Grove, Marsden Road, Drewe Street, Moorhouse Crescent, Porter Parade, Tranter Close, Neville Lane, Wilding Circle, Hall Drive and Grenville Place.

Oh, by the way, the Lord Byron connection is a furphy. It was James Cook no less who, eighteen years before the birth of the poet, on his maiden mapping voyage to the southern oceans glanced the Cape naming this most easterly point of the Australian mainland after his boss. Byron wasn't named after the romantic at all, but one of his forebears, Admiral Byron. But 'giving the lie,' isn't that intrinsic to life as well as fiction?

Peter Barclay was Director of the Byron Bay Writers' Festival. The second Byron Festival took place in late July, 1998.

Photo: Stuart Owen Fox