Customer Reviews

The Road from Coorain

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

This story deeply touched me. I wish I'd read it when I was in my 20's. The descriptions of the Australian outback and its history are beautifully written. But more importantly this is the story of a young girl's development of strength, intellectual curiosity, courage and individuality. Her puzzlement and subsequent outrage at the gender discrimination she was subject to struck a nerve for me. I particularly recommend this book to college age women, but it surely would be an inspiration to anyone.

Prior to reading this book, I had no interest in travelling to Australia. By the time I had finished the first chapter, my interest was a burning desire. Conway's prose style is descriptive to the point of painting vivid pictures while not being verbose or tiring. My husband and I sought to experience the "outback" west of Coorain. What a memorable stay - on a sheep station where the sheep shearer's cottages were used as guest houses. We've given copies of the book to at least 20 friends over the years as house guest gifts, Christmas and birthday presents. Local book clubs have feasted on its powerful story of what it was like for a woman to grow up in Australia in the middle of the last century.

The wonderful autobiography entitled, The Road From Coorain, written by Jill Ker Conway is a must-read! Her engaging and rich detail gives an enchanting description of the Australian life-style from a very unique perspective.
Beginning in the 1930's, young Jill Ker lived with her tightly-knit family on a ranch called Coorain, Australia. Isolated in the desert and located far from Sydney, Coorain, has created an unordinary life-style for not only Jill but for her two brothers, Barry and Bob. Maintaining the remote Coorain is the family's only way to ensure stability and in the eyes of Mr. and Mrs. Ker; the significance of Coorain is considered more important than a formal education. Though, when the dreadful droughts of the arid terrain continue to spontaneously appear, life becomes awfully challenging and difficult for the Ker family. Suffering from famine because of the lack of crops and animals, Coorain becomes involved in a downward spiral. As a result, Jill as well as other family members, encounter the enormous struggle of overcoming the concept of death and sorrow. As Jill grows into a young woman, she faces unfortunate events that set her back, creating various obstacles as she journeys down the unpredictable road of life. Faced with challenges romantically, intellectually, and within the family ultimately affects her career and talents, though somehow Jill miraculously manages to succeed.
Choosing an academic career as a historian, Jill faced the constant struggle of chauvinism living as a young woman during the 1950's. Her passion and remarkable academic achievements clearly demonstrated her natural talent as a student. Unfortunately, the unfair privileges men had in contrast to women was a constant obstacle. Jill had potential and unlike some other women, had the possibility of attaining her high hopes and dreams. Her brilliance and intellectual capability distinguished her as an individual, though she was unfortunately not recognized with equality because she was woman. "But I received a blandly courteous letter thanking me for my interest. I was dumfounded. Milton and I had ranked first in our class and were to be awarded the University Medal jointly for our academic achievements. I could scarcely believe that my refusal was because I was a woman...I knew I was no more and no less intellectually aggressive than Milton and Rob. That left my sex and my appearance." Though Jill Ker faced multiple obstacles throughout her life, she clearly proves that hard work and perseverance is a powerful way to achieve one's goals.
This engaging autobiography is filled with compelling and descriptive prose. Beautifully written, Mrs. Conway eloquently yet succinctly expresses the many conflicts one can be presented in life. Given her natural gravitation towards the subject of history, she enlightens the reader with interesting historical backgrounds of the many places she has traveled. Her simplistic, yet thought-provoking perspectives maintain one's fascination throughout the course of the book. Every moment I spend reading it was enjoyable. Mrs. Conway's, informative yet concise style of writing kept me actively involved. Her marvelously written descriptions, gave me an excellent understanding of the rural Australian life-style: "On the western side the mountains' gentler hills sloped down to rolling countryside; valleys covered with rich black soil sheltered streams winding westward. The gentle slopes rising from each watercourse were crowned with orchards in blossom, while below the contoured patterns of spring crops burst in brilliant green from the dark earth. I liked looking at this scenery with the dew still on it, well before the heat of the day." This autobiography filled with endless drama, love, and the hardships of life, is a definite must-read!

Jill Ker-Conway's childhood in rural Australia and mid-20th century Sydney was one of the best autobiographies I have read. As an Australian, it was wonderful for me to see so clearly how our historic ties with Britain shaped our nation and our psyches, both positively and negatively. But this is not just a book for Australians. Many of my American friends have thoroughly enjoyed this book too. Ker-Conway's writing is fluid and poetic and is a sheer pleasure to read.

'The Road from Coorain' was a very interesting book and I thought it was well written. I found Jill Ker Conway's account of Australia's outback, cities, schooling and history very interesting and informative. I learned much from this book. It was intriguing to see how British history and the influence of the British formed the dynamics of Australia. There are areas in this book that are on the dry side and I did skim a few parts, but overall this book is very interesting.

Jill Ker Conway is an excellent, focused, academic writer, now President of Smith College in USA. She grew up in the orange dust of the Australia bush with no children as playmates, yet remembers a wonderful childhood with an especial concern for her mother's life. She writes this book as a successful adult, reconstructing the steps that got her through the University of Sydney's very demanding late-1950's history department. At that time, university studies were open to women, but the focus was on males, both living and dead white men. It was British colonial history that was taught, and most educated people picked up an inferiority complex about being Australian. Near the end of the book she writes about how she shook herself loose of this view, became proud and fond of the outback, and finally accepted that she was a city person. NEar the end she lands a history-teaching position at the U. of Sydney while enrolled in a Master's level program there, and it all closes tantalyzingly with a successful bid for a position at Harvard in USA. I've noticed often as a tourguide that British, Canadian and Australian women on my buses are very well-read and discuss books as a matter of fact, as something that one should know. They speak in a crisp and exact way with reasoned opinions. This writer falls in that category, well at the forefront of course. She knows herself, her own mind, and knows injustice and sexism when she experiences it herself. Her widening eyes begin to grasp that Europeans have simply grabbed the land of the aborigines. As a historian, she starts to want to know their view. To me, as an American, it is a slippery slope. There is only one logical conclusion: that all the land should be given back. Since this cannot be done, and Asians are beginning to flood into Australia as well since the 1960's, then the best strategy of the whites, if guilt they do feel over this landgrab, is to donate of their own accord time, help, money, food, clothing or training to their own poor. Academics around the world are concerned with the rights of "native peoples", but to turn back the clock is impossible. The interlopers are here. I greatly look forward to hie'ing my white yet hairy flesh over to the library and looking for the sequel to her life story and changing views. May she come to some peace about her ancestors' plopping down on the abo's!

Jill Ker Conway writes with a voice of inevitable achievement that drives this short memoir along. She describes her childhood in the Australian bush, a childhood filled with both accomplishment and tragedy. There is an undercurrent of joy here, perhaps of contentment. I particularly enjoyed the parts about the nonviolent dismantling of colonialism, the sexism of the fifties, and her relationship with her family as she grew from a child to an adult. The only flaw I found was that she covered racism and to a lesser extent sexism with a voice of current polite culture, and not the more consistent voice of her childhood and youth used throughout the book. In other words, the disapproving academic put her fingers in the pie. Still, this is a memoir of the highest quality, which matches West with the Night in my opinion, and which might eventually take a place with the very finest I've read, such as Wind, Sand, and Stars.

I found this to be an uncomfortable read as I can totally empathise with the author, growing up in the same era and knowing the feeling of being out of sync with the older generation. I realise that this probably happens even now but at least these days, females have grown up knowing themselves to be the equal of males and without having to apologise for sometimes being smarter.Jill was fortunate to have a very good education but was also responsible for earning Australian government scholarships which are awarded solely on the good marks earned in exams( not by good luck as one reviewer implied).Even so, she was, not so subtley reminded that a woman's primary function was as a wife and mother and as a mere adjunct to her husband and even brothers. This state of affairs probably existed in all cultures at that time, and not just i Australia, but even as I read, that old feeling of suffocation was present...the feeling that you wanted more but of what, you couldn't say and your parents certainly didn't understand either.

"The Western plains of New South Wales are grasslands." Grasslands that with their vastness, their cycles of drought and bounty, and above all their isolation, shaped a little girl who would one day become Smith College's first woman president.

This book has been marketed as a coming of age story for girls. It's surely that, and a remarkable one. It is also (for this American reader, anyway) a fascinating look into a culture of many similarities - but with subtle, yet sometimes startling differences. Something else it ought to be is required reading for any young woman (particularly any gifted young woman!) trapped by a co-dependent relationship with her birth family. Read it, and think about what this world loses every time a woman capable of Jill Ker Conway's lifetime achievements subsumes her talents and sacrifices her dreams because the code of her childhood demands it.

A book that will stay will me always.

--Reviewed by Nina M. Osier, author of "Love, Jimmy: A Maine Veteran's Longest Battle"

This book delivers a fascinating account of a fragile ecosystem and an equally fragile human society dependent on it. Jill Ker's coming of age is put into a societal and ecological context, which stimulates my curiosity about Australia and her other works. Her outside look at the "colonial mentality" resonates with my own immigrant's view of the cultures where I have lived, and raises interesting societal questions applicable not only to Australia. "The Road from Coorain" is a fast read despite longer descriptive passages, and I highly recommend it.