1 Introduction

Thea Astley(1925-2004） was an multi-award-winning Australian novelist, a prolific writer, one of Australia’s most celebrated writers. She published 16 works of fiction during her lifetime. As a writer committed to writing for over forty years, she has achieved great success in Australian literary circle and has won the Miles Franklin Award 4 times, which is a feat shared only by Tim Winton in Australian history. She has won all major literary national awards, her work has been published outside Australia, and academic scholarship on her novels and short stories continued to increase. She has influenced a generation of Australian women writers such as Helen Garner and Kate Grenville and is known for her support of the many younger writers who came within her orbit as a teacher (Lamb, xi).

Her last novel Drylands won her a fourth Miles Franklin Award in 2000, which makes it worth great efforts to explore and discover the charm of this novel. It portrays a fictional small town in rural Queensland, named Drylands（also the name of the novel), economically and morally devastated by drought as, one by one, its inhabitants leave the town in search of psychological replenishment and greater economic prosperity in coastal or watery areas. The bulk of Drylands is a set of stories arising from the protagonist’s imagination. Sitting in her flat above her dying convenience store in a town economically crippled by drought, Janet decides to write a“book for the world’s last reader” (Astley, 6). Interspersed with short passages detailing Janet’s thoughts and reflections as she writes the novel, there are mainly six stories imagining short periods in the lives of some of the town’s inhabitants. The ensemble of protagonists includes an accountant, a writing instructor, an indigenous farm hand, two housewives, and a farmer. The lives of the main characters unfold in a nonlinear time structure, with no overarching or unified plot, connected only by their experience, temporary, or otherwise, of living in Drylands during the drought (Cahillane, 2). This paper analyzes how those characters escape to different places in Queensland for a variety of reasons and in many different ways so as to show that escape is a key motif in the novel.

2 Escape

2.1 Escape as a mass immigration in Australian history

Escape is a permanent theme in the history of human beings. Sam Bluefarb said, “any mass movement (or immigration as historians call it), in which people intend to desert the old and unsatisfactory conditions and look for new ones can be considered as a kind of escape” (Sam, 10).

Based on Bluefarb’s concept of escape, it is clear that escape is of great significance to Australia since it is predominantly a nation of immigrants, which means mass movement of population from all over the world either in the past or at present. These occurrences of escape have become a major tradition in Australian literature.

The first recent mass escape or diaspora in Australian history was the settlement of the British colony in Sydney in 1788. The indigenous Australians were original owners of the continent, who had lived there over 60,000 years. However, their peaceful life was broken by the first mass “escape” or migration of population which started with those first permanent British settlers who arrived in Sydney Botany Bay in 1788, a mix of convicts from England and the military officers responsible for controlling them. The colonial governors were charged by Britain to create a self-sufficient colony. They sought to turn convicts who had served their prison terms into useful farmers and artisans. In this new world, they began to seek both their spiritual and economic rebirth (Xia, 57).

The second wave of mass escape was concerned with the founding of major cities in Australia. Explorers paved the way for movement beyond the original towns of first settlement. They established sites for other penal settlements and founded other major cities in Australia like Hobart in 1803, Brisbane in 1824, Perth in 1829, Melbourne and Adelaide in 1836. (Xia, 57, 70)

The third wave of mass escape happened right after gold was discovered in Victoria in 1851. Within a year, more than 500,000 people (nicknamed “diggers”) rushed to the gold fields of Australia to seek their fortune. Most of these immigrants were British, but many prospectors from the United States, Germany, Poland, and China also settled in NSW and Victoria. Even more immigrants arrived from other parts of Australia. These people flooded into the new ‘gold mountain’ for great fortune, thus the enormous increase in the population and wealth of Victoria meant that “Marvellous Melbourne” overshadowed the founding city of Sydney by the 1880s (Xia, 58) .

In general, the last wave of mass escape happened since the late 1940s when Australia needed labour power for its postwar industrial expansion, hence there appeared the postwar migration boom, when about 5.6 million immigrants from over 140 countries have made Australia their home. Socially immigration has made Australia one of the most cosmopolitan and active societies in the world. (Zhang, 96)

Escape took on a variety of forms for different reasons during different periods of time based on different levels of human development. As time went by, the scale of mass ‘escapes’ in Australian history decreased gradually and finally became the initiative of individuals. Now immigrants from different parts of the world come to Australia in pursuit of a better life, more opportunities and fulfillment of their long-cherished dreams.

The theme of escape is reflected in Astley’s last novel, which shows different characters’ long journeys of adventure and escape from reality and unhappiness of life. In the following part, Thea Astley’s personal life will be explored to shed light on the reasons why her characters in Drylands have similar feelings of escape.

2.2 Escape in Thea Astley's Life

Through her whole life, Thea Astley herself tried her best to escape through various means for a range of reasons.

Thea Astley was born in Brisbane on 25 August 1925, and was given the name “Thea” meaning ‘gift of the God’ or ‘Goddess’ (Thea being the Greek goddess of light).

Her family settled in Waterworks Road in a suburb five or six kilometers from Brisbane and accessible by tram. Queensland was a home she loved and hated. The area was originally noted for its genteel rural estates, but later it attracted an influx of thousands of families looking for relatively cheap houses near the city during the post-WWII baby boom period.

Her parents’ unhappy marriage created tension in the family home throughout Thea’s childhood. When she was a primary school child, the atmosphere at home was quietly tense, characterized by silences between her parents, punctuated with many arguments. (Lamb, 7) For her parents, marriage was disappointing after what had been a promising romance. Her runaway maternal grandfather left his family for the city life, hence her mother Eileen endured a very straitened upbringing with her two sisters in a single-parent household. Her grandfather escaped to the city for a new wild life at the expense of abandoning his wife and kids. Thea’s grandmother became a deserted wife, which was to be a practically and emotionally terrible reality.

In Thea’s eyes, due to her grandmother’s unfortunate family situation, she began to understand her mother’s embarrassment and troubled personality caused by lack of education and closeness between family members. According to Karen Lamb’s research, “intimacy and emotional frankness——things she craved——were not part of ordinary life in the household in which Astley grew up. As a child, she was vulnerable and exposed to differences within the home and allegiances outside of it——particularly religious ones that she could hardly have been expected to understand” (Lamb, 6). Her mother Eileen lacked the sense of security due to her absentee grandfather. While in Astley’s own family, her mother was the ever-present parent who needed a confidant. Instead, Astley’s father Cecil, known as a man of extraordinary wide knowledge with a finer sense of language, worked long hours as a senior sub-editor. Therefore, the lack of communication and common interest may have caused the tension and friction in the family.

Astley’s mother was a devout conservative Catholic who instilled a strong knowledge of religion in her children. Astley’s older brother Phil’s choice of commitment to religion and devotion of his whole life to the Catholic church made Astley rather confused. In fact, the way of expressing the gap between what she was forced to do and what she actually felt troubled her whole life.

Her mother’s religion was rather severe and unforgiving, “it was ‘a peculiarly obsessive, categorical and intolerant brand of Irish-Australian Catholicism’, full of confusing ideas about sin, forgiveness, judgment and punishment.” (Lamb, p20) Living in a Catholic family with very strict religious rules, in her daily life, she had to follow the rituals of Catholicism, such as reciting the Rosary, being exposed to the deeply-rooted idea of chastity before marriage and a complex set of rules governing marriage and divorce. She was taught to observe absolute obedience to the laws of the church. In a certain sense, Astley felt depressed guilty and perplexed by the difference between the rules and her observation in real life. She was tortured by the gap between what was preached and what was real. To her, the secular search for love and the religious love of God were worlds apart. She remained convinced that parental love was the only love that lasted (Lamb, 283).

In primary school, because of her peculiar personality, the special attention and appreciation of her approving teacher, as well as her outstanding academic achievements, she was looked upon by her classmates as somewhat quirky. She was unlikely to be one of a group, not to mention being popular among her peers. So she was not accepted and welcomed by her peers.

Fortunately, she found a very good means of escape into her own world. Astley’s father encouraged her to read ‘almost anything at all’ (Lamb, 15). In her family, she tried to seek out ‘many corners’ where she might escape the ‘warfare of married couples’ (Lamb, 18). In one of the ‘many corners’ she found reading. She buried herself in reading, in search of the existence of God, in a form she could accept. “Reading was her escape, being a slave, and proof positive that a world existed beyond her own. Books were also a form of consolation” (Lamb, 18). She grabbed whatever books were around her. At the age of eight, she read Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, which was far beyond the true understanding for a kid of her age. “The emotional and psychological reality of the novel brushes against the edges of a developing sensibility, long before the child can hope for complete understanding of what is being read” (Lamb, 18). Reading provided a perfect way for Thea to avoid troubles in her family and school life.

2.3 Escape in Drylands

2.3.1 In the story “A Long Run, A Good Season”, the main character had no choice but to escape to a small town called Drylands and live under a false name Franzi Massig and false identity. In fact he used to be a law firm accountant, because he suspected staff corruption at a lower level and was troubled by conspiracy, bribes, pay-offs, drug deals, vast laundering of trust funds, for various reasons. Hence, he started an I-spy investigation of privileged boss funds. Unfortunately, he failed to find out even the dimmest shape of the truth and finally when he reported, exposed graft and embezzlement to the authorities. This resulted in a series of newspaper articles being published and charges being laid. Obviously it was unsafe to live in the same place, in order to stay alive, so Massig cleaned out his bank account and planned to flee. He took a cab to the airport for a flight north under an assumed name. At last, he arrived in Brisbane, where he bought a second-hand car, used a false license and made up stories about coming to this strange place. He had a new name on his driving license and registration papers. He opened a new bank account. He started a new life in a strange place with false identity. His series of actions were aimed at ensuring him a safe hidden identity in Drylands.

In order his true identity should not to be found out, he made up a good story about his background, his parents’ immigration history and his own past experience. He even sorted all his lies! His problem was remembering the lies. Wherever he went, he kept a low profile, tried to be dull and conservative so that the town would forget he was there. He tried every means to hide his presence. Even though he had lived there for four years, he was still regarded as a newcomer. For the past four years of escape, he was worried about reprisals from his old firm taking place in some lurid fictional  scenario. He changed his appearance by growing a beard and clipped moustache, which made him into another man.

But one night, a hand-printed note being left on his pillow made him nervous again. It said “Who the hell do you think you are” (Astley, 48) ? He was also asked by a pub owner about some dark secret in his past. He realized that his past secret was going to be exposed. A few days later, he drove to the coast with a second sense of escape (Astley, 52). After two days’ relaxation and enjoyment, he came back home, only to find a man was sitting insolently in his easy chair, sipping from a mug of tea. In his hand he was holding the opened packet of letters, the man said he was Franzi Massig, which means the real Franzi Massig was standing in front of him. Now the false identity was discovered and what would happen to the escaper? He vanished somewhere else. That would be his third escape. Astley left this question to her readers.

2.3.2 In the story “Stranger in Town”, a literate woman stranger named Evie came to the small town Drylands and planned to teach the women some knowledge of arts but unfortunately only four women (namely Win, Paddy, Lannie and Ro) were eager for culture. Evie swallowed disappointment at the lack of takers. She watched the four women’s eager faces, noted their worn hands, and understood the isolation of the small place that drove people to seize any opportunity for escape from humdrummery (Astley,81). She noticed that the four women were playing truant from husbands who regarded their activity as mere female folly. They were fighting the darkness (Astley, 81).

These four women were greatly interested in learning something new and living a different life. They were eager to escape the monotonous and boring life. Here came Evie who was their saviour. She told them to help each other. This day was different with the pleasure of simply cutting loose from the ordinariness of the other-day grind in this simplest of ways (Astley, 83). Their bonds strengthened. They gained some sort of power and strength. Evie taught them not only musical knowledge but also set them readings, giving the simplest assignments (Astley, 87). She taught the four women to have their own ideas and enjoy the happiness of being free from family burdens and endless chores. She encouraged them not to be simply milkers, tractor drivers, cleaners, cooks, gardeners from morning till night and stressed they should be themselves doing something new in life. Evie instilled them with the classics by world-famous authors such as Chekhov, Hemingway and Carver. She was anxious to enlighten these women through music and books. But in fact, Evie herself was a victim of domestic violence and she had escaped from her own lost marriage and hid the months of disillusion with a gambler’s broken promises, the poverty, the debts, the emptied bank accounts. All the difficulties in life hardened her. She persisted in teaching these four women out of family troubles and to live a different life.

Did her efforts change those women’s life? Something unpleasant happened and interrupted their short enjoyment. One day, while they were sitting in the shade of the pepper trees over tea and sandwiches, a truck pulled up on the road with an angry screech of rubber and two men got out of the truck and came close to them. They were Win’s and Ro’s husbands. The two men showed their violence in dealing with their wives. Ro’s husband cursed the teacher from the city. He did not allow Ro to attend the class and dragged at her arm, he jerked her up roughly, then he drew his arm back like a paddle and swung his palm forward in one savage movement that cracked the bone of her cheek. The poor woman let out a small scream and fell forward, her hands digging at the grass. He used his boot to nudge her shoulder as she lay, nudged, drew back and drove in harder. Ro was beaten seriously (Astley, 91).The poor woman could not escape from domestic violence!

Woman’s place was at home and she was not allowed to get out of the family to attend any class, take part in any activity or have her own ideas. Evie advised Ro not to stay with her husband and take a refuge on the coast and she should do something for a change. Evie looked at the ruins of the day, the discarded lunch, the injured woman, the broken but loving attempts to assuage, she was eager to help those four women in her own way but due to the influence of deep-rooted patriarchy, her strength was not powerful enough to save them out of the great misery. The town was so small that everyone knew each other. No one could help women in dealing with the domestic violence, the police wouldn’t act and they always took the husband’s side in these matters (Astley, 93). Women were possessions of men and they were in an inferior position and they could not protect themselves, nor the police, nor anybody else! That was a vicious circle. Who would be their rescuers? These women could not escape the domestic violence and prejudice against them.

In this story, all of Evie’s efforts proved useless and she could not talk Ro into giving her own time to think a way out, learning from her personal experiences in marriage, Evie wanted to save them from their misery, and she was eager to arouse their awareness of self-confidence and self-value, to help them escape the misery and monotony of ordinary life, but all in vain. Finally she had to leave the town. At the end of the story, the five women’s efforts ended up a failure and they could not change their fate of being oppressed by their husbands and they had no safe place to escape. All ended in failure.

2.3.3 In the story “Trumped”, under the Aboriginal Protection Act, Benny was carried off to live in a reserve outside Brisbane where he grew up without knowing any parentage at all. At thirteen, he was told by an older man at the reserve that his indigenous mother Jilly was still around. At fifteen, Benny began his first escape from the reserve on the long way in search of his mother who was said to work on a big station. During his escape, he worked fencing on a run-down sheep property for survival. His second escape took place the same year when he ran off from the fencing job. He walked and walked to the end of the south-western line where he wandered along the near-empty wide dusty streets of that town. Close by, with the help of the locals, he found his mother who suffered so much from her white boss at a very young age that she gave birth to Benny and was taken away to a remote place. She didn’t want to say much of her past. It hurt her too much. Every time when Benny and his mother met, nothing was able to dissolve that tundra of years that had separated them. That’s what made them both weep secretly and hopelessly after each parting. Years later, after his mother and wife passed away, Benny decided to return to Drylands where he was born. It was his start, his dream, the start of things.

Benny gave up his job at railway yards and moved out to Drylands to try his hand at subsistence living. All he took from his mother’s house was a three-piece lounge suite and a picture of her. He owned little. He had lived for the last ten years in a broken-down shack on a five-acre patch outside town. No one knew for sure his real age, sixty-five or seventy. Because of his old age, he could not be able to work for a living, instead he was on the old-age pension, what was worse, he could not pay all kinds of necessary rates. The town council warned him that they would have to sell up his property for unpaid rates, under their threat, Benny’s only shelter was taken away by the council, and he was forced to plan his third escape.

Benny told Paddy his decision to move to a cave, bit of a rockpool, way off the beaten track. He planned to camp there for a bit till he thought out what he wanted to do. On Benny’s last day in his home of ten years at Drylands, he crammed all his possessions ——his clothes, six books, cooking utensils and tucker, camp stretcher, in two cardboard boxes. A sagging Genoa-velvet three-piece lounge suite which weighed a ton was left by his mother and it was as good memory of his family, so Benny took great pains to move it on Paddy’s truck. It took them half the morning to move the furniture from truck to cave. Benny lived peacefully alone in his “paradise” for a month before he was discovered by a “spy” called Briceland who was Benny’s white half-brother. He made up excuses to spread the news that Benny lived in a cave, saying that it was a national park, letting one in and they would have a mob of ferals stuck all over the place with their tin humpies and plantations of pot (Astley,190). “It’s the ecology we’ve got to think about. And tourism. ”Benny had to move and he was creating health and fire risks. The parks had not been gazetted for campers. Briceland rang the police sergeant and explained in exaggerated details, called for political intervention for a city transfer. The sergeant drove out to the gorge and threatened Benny with arrest. They took the possession of Benny’s all belongings and took them back to town. Benny had no place to escape and his only shelter in nature was taken away. What was his next fate? The author did not give an answer.

2.3.4 In the story of “Taking Five”, the main character Lannie Cunneen by name, realized her strong desire for a change in life. She took actions to resist against man’s control. According to the story, She was a typical housewife. Her daily work for twenty years was to take good care of her husband and 6 boys. One day she was fed up with all the boring chores of having prepared 9328 lunches, so she drove all morning and the whole afternoon aimlessly forgetting until she stopped on a small knoll overlooking a beach. She wanted a place of her own without any disturbance. That was a kind escape——an escape from endless family chores, escape from husband Fred’s control and escape from children’s indifference to her. She made it. She fell asleep lulled by the steady rhythm of water breaking on the sand below. She did enjoy the moment of quietness until suddenly she was woken up by two coppers and was brought back to the police station where she said nothing except keeping giving them numbers in thousands. After her husband Fred came, she was sent to a therapy clinic to seek treatment from a psychiatrist. She was regarded as a neurotic for she kept mentioning numbers. Lannie said, “I have six (boys), all school age. I have made rough estimates of the numbers of dinners, breakfasts, lunches, washings and ironings over twenty years of bliss (here ironic). My husband won’t allow boys to give a hand. He says it’s women’s work. He believes a woman’s place is in the home. Permanently (Astley, 212).”

In the case of Lannie, she was not allowed to work and her career came to an end, but from the bottom of her heart, she did not yield to such an unfair fate. She wanted a change in life and wanted to prove her own value and won respect from others.  Lannie first escaped to the beach for a short break, but she was caught by ‘coppers’, as she called the policemen, and sent to the police station where she was taken by her husband to a clinic for mental treatment. Escaping her husband’s domination was her priority. During her treatment in the clinic, Lannie enjoyed the rest of being there. She enjoyed having meals brought on trays. She read sometimes but mostly sat in the small courtyard of the clinic and stared into space. She completely enjoyed her quiet time in the clinic and did not want to go back home (Astley, 218). She lived a life totally different from her past life of twenty years. Please notice that Lannie just lived at the clinic, this being a kind of ‘escape’ from her ordinary life.

Where she lived, it seemed women were a mere possession to be controlled and owned. Lannie could not break free from the cage set by her husband and six boys. She did not want to surrender to her husband’s oppression and realized the necessity of being brave enough to resist his control. Thus, she took more actions to prove her own power. In order to avoid being controlled and ‘tamed’ by her husband, she left the clinic without telling anyone and lived in a hotel in the town of Drylands in preparation for job seeking. The fact was that she had been out of the workforce for twenty years, although it was impossible to land a job, she persisted in her stubborn way. She degraded herself by getting any kind of paid work even if paid low. “General dogsbody, is that what you want?” Lannie answered “That’s what I want.” “Me. She thought. Me”. It indicated that she wanted to be free from any control and oppression. In other words, she wanted a life, just a bit of life outside kitchen and the wash–house. When she was told by the personnel manager of the radio station she could start work the next day, she was so excited that she could even start immediately. She began to reorganize her life and it proved that she could settle in and work efficiently. From her colleagues she gained her self-confidence and self-respect. Through her painstaking efforts, her escape was successful! That was the only successful escape that was depicted in the novel “Drylands”. Her success was the result of a strong determination to have a voice of her own and achieve her economic independence.

Meanwhile in this story, Lannie’s husband, Fred, had an affair with a lady called Norma, who happened to be pregnant. Norma went to Fred’s office, but Fred was unavoidably away on shire business. She had no choice but to find sanctuary in a church refuge. She had no money, no job, no friends. After she gave birth to a baby, in order to take her revenge, Norma tucked her baby under rugs, put it in a neat bassinet along with feeding bottles and napkins, and abandoned it on the veranda of Fred’s front door. A note was attached, saying “Dear Fred, this is yours.” Norma fled and tried to escape her responsibility for being an irrational and irresponsible mother. The story did not end there. Fred drove the baby to a hospital, handed it to a nurse, made up a series of plausible lies without giving any useful information. Then he drove away in a hurry. Although he felt guilt, he escaped his moral responsibility.

Lannie’s story tells us that a woman could be successful, independent and free of man’s control by working and earning her own wages and living. Economic independence guarantees her independence of personality and helps her win dignity and self-respect that she hasn’t enjoyed for the past twenty years.

2.3.4 In the story “Almost there, almost home”, Clem and Janet ran a bar called the Lizard. Each day had its predictable contours. To make life more meaningful, Janet learned to paint in watercolors as a soother. Each Wednesday morning for the last month, Janet would drive out miles towards the Rock, her painting gear and a large flagon of water on the passenger seat with a packet of sandwiches. She was there to catch those shifting purples and blues of landscape.

One day she sang as she drove when she parked the car in her usual spot, set up the easel, hauled out her paints and camp stool and got to work. She felt quite happy. Suddenly it was then that a four-wheel-drive roared into the clearing, did a dust-sprawling ‘wheelie’ and braked a few miles away. Two bad men—Ray Friske and Clutch Dallow—got out, slammed the car doors and came closer to Janet who forced herself up with trembling legs. She was going to shove everything in the car and leave, but was stopped by Clutch. Ray even destroyed her painting by urinating on it. Janet forgot the easel, the paints, the camp stool, she darted into the car, fast, slippery, locked the door and switched on the motor, revving savagely before swinging round to belt off, bumping and bouncing along the track to the main road. She began her first escape from threat and death. It was thirty kilometers to town. The scene was really like one in a movie. Janet was overtaken before she could get ahead out on the main road. Her hands shook on the wheel. Janet jerked the steering hard right in an attempt to get past and it was nightmare in broad daylight. She drove almost blindly with their four-wheel-drive chasing, overtaking then slowing, forcing her again and again to dodge the menacing rump of their van. The two ‘bastards’ constantly harassed and skimmed inches apart, howled at Janet through the windows while she struggled to keep control of her car on the loose surface. As she was nearing the outer fringes of Drylands, the two bastards’ van accelerated and came rushing towards her, not to pass but to press Janet in and in towards the shoulder and gutter of a dried-out creek. They slammed the side of the car, swing out, slammed again until Janet’s car toppled sideways on the bank edge. Janet limped suffering her bruises towards town with blood-smeared face.

After the narrow escape, Janet was frightened and worried about the two ‘bastards’ who would come to trouble her any time, there was no choice but to leave the bar and her husband.

Janet left the town alone within the week (Astley, 269). She found work behind the reception desk of another hotel for one month, then she changed to do another work at a plant nursery. She was kept busy and exhausted for 2 months, but the bad news was that her complacency was ruptured by a stranger’s phone call. She sensed the danger and threat approaching again. It turned out that one night the two bastards came again, broke into her house, lit up the place like a beach fair soon after she stumbled out of her room from the back door. To Janet, this was a replay: the difference was that this time the film darkened, the surface scratched, so the effect was night instead of day except for the sound system (Astley,278). Janet planned to drive away but she could not start the engine, so she had to lock herself in the car like sitting in a jail, while the two bad men rocked her car screeching with laughter. In the nick of time, the engine fired, Janet jerked away from the two drunken ‘bastards’, and she hid herself in a motel for the whole night. The next morning, she was accompanied by a kind ‘copper’ to her wrecked house, which was totally destroyed. She suffered so much from the harassment and threat that she dared not work and live at the plant nursery any more. Fortunately, the owner Mr McPhee was a nice elderly man who advised her to stay because the two ‘bastards’ were charged with malicious damage and would be held pending trial. Janet stayed until her return to Legless Lizard in the last story.

2.3.5 Villagers’ Escape from the town Drylands

There was no hustle and bustle of life in the small town anymore. In the last story, the only character and narrator——Janet who appeared through the whole book watched the empty early morning street and noticed that the town was vanishing before her eyes. She was going to transfer the news agency franchise of her bookstore to someone else. The old good days of the small town were gone forever. The Legless Lizard dangled a FOR SALE sign like a dead flag (Astley, 285). Three of the properties west of the town had been reclaimed by the banks. The cafe down the road had closed for lack of custom. Janet pointed out that “the town, as a town, was being manoeuvred by weather. As simple as that. Drought. Dying stock (Astley, 287).” The town lost its vitality. The empty pub seemed to have stopped breathing. It seemed that everything was in stagnancy. Villagers had been drifting out and on. Farmers were selling up, distraught by lack of water, dying stock and impossible debts. They fled the town. For Janet, this sudden abandonment of sentimental loyalties to the town made her weepy and sad. She had no choice but to escape from this place, and tried to stamp all the memories in her mind for later recollection, what was worse, she had no idea where she might go. Only that she must. The victory would be in leaving (Astley, 293). The small town was going to die.

Conclusion

The strong desire for freedom found in above-mentioned characters of Drylands coincides with the influences Astley received from her family who often chose to live outside of society’s conventions. The quest for escape displayed in these characters, reflects a mood evolving from individuals’ long-standing desire to escape physical and psychological bonds associated with traditional religious, political, material, and personal beliefs. Astley described all types of‘small potatoes’in the small town, each character struggled through various ways to escape from his or her monotonous, boring, unpleasant and unsafe life, but due to various reasons, such as oppression from men, authority, the white, and the whole society as well as the hot and dry weather in the small town of Drylands, most of them could not escape successfully from their ordinary life, nor could they change their destiny. They could not find permanent secure places to flee to. Astley’s last novel “Drylands” reflects the general theme of ‘escape’ in a diasporic nation that Australia has become. It exemplifies the characteristic feature of Australia and Australian life and that this was Thea Astley’s intention (conscious or unconscious).

References

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[2] Lamb,K. (2015). Thea Astley: Inventing Her Own Weather. University of Queensland Press.

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[9] Cahillane, A.(2020). Dry Country, Wet City: A World-Ecological Reading of Drought in Thea Astley’s Drylands. Humanities ,2020, 9 (3), 79. https://doi.org/10.3390/h9030079.