JCU Library Special Collections has been the recipient of a selection of plays written by John Naish, Welsh novelist and playwright. These works are part of the newly established John Naish Archive in the Library Archives Collection. Digital versions of the play manuscripts are being progressively uploaded to the Archive in NQHeritage@JCU. The Archive joins two of his novels held by the Library in the North Queensland Collection, The Cruel Field and That Men Should Fear.
In 1963 it was predicted that Naish would assume a dominant position in Australian literature. This prediction came on the back of his impressive submissions to the 1958 General Motors-Holden (GMH) National Playwrights’ Competition conducted by the newly formed Australian Elizabethan Trust and the 1963 Miles Franklin Literary Award. Meanwhile his autobiography and two novels were published by prestigious publishing house Hutchinson of London. Two plays had also been published in Australia, a remarkable achievement as, then and now, there is no sale for, and little prestige in publishing plays. Meanwhile Eunice Hanger, prominent Queensland actor, playwright, university lecturer, and collector of quality unpublished play scripts acquired copies of two of Naish’s plays which are now preserved in her collection of unpublished play scripts in Fryer Library, University of Queensland.
 |
John Naish Date unknown. Photograph kindly supplied by the Naish family. |
Why then is his name not known as well as Sumner Locke Elliott and Peter Kenna who won those afore mentioned competitions? After all, Naish was a prolific writer. We cannot be sure when Naish first started putting pen to paper but if it is presumed that he began writing after his arrival in Australia in 1950 his entire body of known work—a possible 17 plays, one short story and three books—was produced over a 13-year period. This is an astonishing output given that his work as a sugar cane cutter left little energy or inclination for anything other than physical rest, and in the slack season he was employed in other menial labour.
The most significant reason Naish has been largely lost to Australia’s literary tradition is that he died prematurely in 1963 aged 40, before he could consolidate the reputation he was acquiring as one of Australia’s most impressive new writers.
Another reason was the challenge he faced living and working in far north Queensland far from the less parochial, more liberal and creative scenes of the southern metropolises. This situation is not peculiar to him alone as north Queensland writers generally, then and now, do not have a high profile in Australian literature let alone in world literature.
Furthermore, lack of critical acclaim and performance and publication opportunities for his plays reflected a broader disinterest in locally produced material. The programmes of the little theatre-amateur dramatic societies mainly featured plays written by internationally renowned playwrights and only occasionally north Queensland playwrights such as Naish.
When I began my current research into John Naish, or Jack as he was known to friends and family, I was already familiar with his sugar country works. Naish was well qualified to write about north Queensland sugar industry work and lifestyle of the 1950s and 1960 when cane cutting was done manually. He came to Australia as a ‘£10 Pom’ in 1950, and apart from a two-year stint in Fiji working as a shipping clerk with Burns Philp Company and nine months back in Wales, he cut sugar cane on farms in far north Queensland, from Mossman to Babinda from 1950 to 1961.
Beginning a deep mine for biographical detail I was fortunate to locate Naish’s sons who held original type-written copies of their father’s plays. I also located two original type-written copies of a further two plays held by The Atherton Performing Arts Group (APA). While some of these plays are sugar country works, others are very different, even surreal.
 |
Dr. Bianka Vidonja Balanzategui with Bronwyn McBurnie (Manager, Special Collections) viewing the new John Naish Archive at JCU Library Special Collections. |
Naish was a complex and contradictory man. His works reveal a deep dissatisfaction with the human condition and suggest an alternative anarchical vision. A rereading of his published works and an examination of these unpublished plays offer not only understandings of a way of life and work long abandoned, but reveal a perceptive outsider’s commentary on the Australian mateship ethos, migrant-Anglo-Australian relationships and small-town class consciousness and pretensions in tropical north Queensland. Careful analysis also exposes an authentic condemnation of the treatment of Indigenous peoples. Also to be found in his works, are the timeless and universal themes of filial discord, unrequited love and frustrated talent. Some of his works are peopled by characters who suffer mental illness and who choose to take their own lives in the face of debilitating illness or others who seek suicide. A path he himself would take.
Other themes in his works are a diffident attitude towards marriage, fatherhood, and the responsibilities both entailed. Yet he also voiced a progressive if sometimes dichotomous opinion of women and their roles.
 |
Snapshot of the original manuscripts in the John Naish Archive at JCU Library Special Collections. |
With the donation by the Naish family and the APA of Naish’s plays to the Special Collections, James Cook University, Townsville John Naish has figuratively come home. Now the complete body of Naish’s work can be revisited by scholars not only for its story telling quality but re-examined for its hitherto unexplored and contentious thematic layers. Naish has a posthumous chance of assuming his rightful place as one of Queensland’s notable literary and visionary figures.
Author Biography
Bianka Vidonja Balanzategui is an historian and historical consultant. She graduated from James Cook University with an Honours degree and PhD in history and is presently a casual academic at JCU. She researches the sugar industry and migration history of tropical north Queensland, and her first book, published by JCU, Gentlemen of the Flashing Blade married those two themes. She also has a keen interest in the history of the Herbert River district where she has lived since her marriage. At present she is researching the role of women in various episodes of North Queensland history.
Comments