Green Grow the Rushes

by T.A.G Hungerford

Truly past World War II, and well into the Vietnam war in the 1970’s, T.A.G Hungerford illustrates how the younger generations were beginning to aim for something more; a greater legacy than that of their parents and grandparents … ‘it was in its heyday at a time when youngsters still planned to attain to something other that retirement and the pension’. 

Hungerford’s work is known for having to be read between the lines, and he covers many themes within Green Grow the Rushes. He alludes to the mistreatment and racism towards the Aboriginal people, and the Chinese in Australia through the casual racism phrases, such as referring to Aboriginal people as ‘blacks’ and ‘Abo’s, and referring to the Chinese as ‘chows’ and ‘the Chinamen’. He also mentions the colonisation and Anglicisation of the Aboriginal people through mentioning a privileged white man ‘physically battle the black for their territory’ for his own gain. Old de Blore also ‘refused to see a Chinese market hardener as a man,’ showing how the effects of white supremacy affected peoples views. 

Hungerford demonstrates both sexism and racism through the way Old de Blore treats his Aboriginal, female slaves, and the suggest rape that can be concluded from the mentioning of his ‘tribe of half-caste kids … And still sleeping two or three nights a week with one or another of the Abo housemaids’. This combined discrimination is also shown throw women being ostracised for marrying a different race because it was ‘improbable’ for people to marry outside their own race and religion. 

Hungerford illustrates the idea of ‘it’s a small world’ by having Dinny Walsh, the main character and narrator, meet up with his childhood crush Miss Honour de Blore, now Hetty Chia/Li Po, in Macau of all places. Through this encounter Hungerford also explores the affect that the Japanese invasions had on the Chinese people, ’The Japs killed him, when they took over … They bayonetted him in the hall … When I got out, after the war, I couldn’t trace my little girl’, and how it tore people and families apart