Error Australis

Ben Pobjie told me recently that he wrote Error Australis simply to make people laugh. However, don’t mistake this very funny book about our quite dismal, ludicrous history for a simple collection of  riffs and anecdotes. Like all clever humour this is a book based on facts. Pobjie starts at the beginning of Australia’s white history and moves deftly through the years to present day. He has divided each of our decisive events into neat chapters where he imagines the goings on of the time. For example, there are chapters on the First Fleet, the Gold Rush and on our notorious bushrangers. Pobjie has clearly done his research on Australian history, and has managed to capture the essence of our larrikin humour.

The book is dripping with irony and punchy one liners. At the end of each chapter are topics for consideration, much like a Year 10 history book from the 1980s. I laughed out loud often, and yet at the same time I did actually learn more about our past. Mainly I felt at the end of my reading a sense of complete bewilderment that so many powerful men in our past were so very stupid and made grave mistakes about each other and our environment. (My thinking regarding this phenomenon has not changed in today’s landscape.) Think along the lines of David Hunt’s Girt, combine that with an even more informal dialogue, sit back and enjoy. Pobjie has nailed our history, our shame and our humour.

Chris Gordon