Far from the Land

Far from the Land is a 1947 Australian radio play by Ruth Park. It was very well received on initial broadcast by the public.^[1]

It was part of a series of historical plays by Park set at sea in Australia's past, the others including I'll Meet You in Botany Bay, Stormy Was the Weather and Early in the Morning (Far from the Land was different from those in that it was fictional.) Leslie Rees later called them:

Eloquent and fine-tempered dossier of studies bearing on our past. They combine the presentation of factual incidents with a keen imaginative perception of character under stress, an ironical feeling for the tears and anguish and disillusionment of persons born to a place in history, an appreciation of pioneering courage balanced by a sense of the failure of life to fulfil its ultimate expectations. These plays have the salt tang of the sea, the roll and pitch of wooden ships breasting through uncharted waters, as well as vivid personal emotions.^[2]

The play was performed again in November 1947.^[3] Reviewing this Smith's Weekly said "they couldn't have picked a drearier play... Nearly all our Australian radio writers are afflicted by two extremes of obsession. Either they are. slavishly imitative of art overseas, or intensely preoccupied with a kind of rugged Australianism, treating our his torical and geographical aspects as something wonderful, mystic and sacred. Miss Park must be of the last order of playwrights. Otherwise she would never have imagined so consistently dull a story, which droned on for a mortal half hour at least, about the cowlike musings of an Irish girl who was sailing from Cork to Sydney... Our writers must understand that patriotism is not enough."^[4]

The play was bought by the BBC and performed a number of times on BBC radio.^[5]

The play was performed again on Australian radio in 1948, 1950,^[6] 1952^[7] and 1957.

Premise

According to ABC Weekly it told "the story of an immigrant ship's voyage from Ireland to Australia in the 1840s. Her heroine is Mary Ann McBride, a waif who has known a cruel childhood and who has hopes of a happier life in Australia. The ship is full of other Irish people, and these characters make a little world on the ship as it breasts its way. with death as an extra passenger. It is a play, full of heart-break and hope, the pain felt by people leaving their country, mixed with the excitements of approaching a new one."^[8]

References