“The Road from Coorain,” by Jill Ker Conway

“The Road from Coorain,” by Jill Ker Conway (New York: Vintage Books; 1989), 238 pages.

It’s not uncommon for autobiographies to read as boastful summaries of the author’s achievements and successes. Such books contain large tracts of recollection where the author places himself/herself at the center of everything, and takes sole credit for their successes. These books also tend to be critical of rivals and competitor’s, pointing out the splinters in their rival’s eye while failing to notice the beams in their own. The Road from Coorain is not such a book; rather it’s a journey of discovery (or coming of age) of an unusually bookish girl in the 1940’s and 1950’s in Australia. Her early years were spent as a home-schooled child on a remote and vast sheep station (ranch). In recalling her early life, she describes the stunning beauty of remote rural Australia, its bountiful appearance after soaking rains, and its slow and relentless decline into drought, where life is slowly strangled from plants, animals, and ultimately from the people that try to farm it. Ker Conway writes of the people that live in these wretched places and how isolation, biblical droughts and loneliness tend to breed hardy people. Not all can take the harshness and remoteness of rural Australia and seek refuge in the bottle, or for more desperate people, suicide. Ker Conway beautifully describes her family’s struggle farming their drought-stricken property, the death of her father, and her mother’s decision to move to Sydney and employ a manager to run their station “Coorain.” 

Ker Conway writes of the difficulty of county kids, such as her, to fit into life in the city. She quickly settles down and with a persistent and increasingly fragile mother, hunger for learning, and a bit of luck blossoms into a confident student at an exclusive high school. Her high school success propelled her to the University of Sydney, where she achieved notable academic success, and slowly realized after a few set backs and travel, that to achieve success in her chosen academic field that she would have to leave Australia for the United Stated.

The Road from Coorain gives us an insight into the Australia of the 1950’s, and all of the not uncommon prejudices, discriminations and disappointments of that time. It also shows one person’s encounter with this world, and one ambitious woman’s response and reaction to it. This beautifully written narrative is both particular and universal for it provides the lovely story of growing up in both rural Australia and the city, as well as the universal theme of how one uses their talents to find their way in the world.