Authors: Fiona Kidman
The Infinite Air (41 page)
I WISH TO ACKNOWLEDGE THAT SOME PHRASES USED
to describe Jean Batten’s flights come from her own early writing as do her logbook entries. The final words attributed to Ellen (Nellie) Batten were quoted in
Jean Batten: The Garbo of the Skies
by Ian Mackersey (Macdonald, 1990). Copyright for letters written by Jean Batten is unclear. The letter on pages 230 and 321 are written in the spirit of her writing only. All the other letters are fiction.
The poem ‘Tobacco is a Dirty Weed’ quoted on page 229 was written in 1915 by Graham Lee Hemminger.
The names of some characters on the fringes of Jean Batten’s life, and their circumstances, have been changed.
I thank many people who have given generous advice and information to assist me with writing
The Infinite Air
. In particular, I thank my research assistants Alice Janssens (London) and Oliver Peryman (Wellington), as well as the following: Dominic Alessio, Jean Anderson, Philip Andrews, Jim Batten, Jennifer Beck, Bev Brett, Anne Collett, David Colquhoun, the late Cherie Devliotis, Peter Downes, Anne Else, Billie Farnell, Lesley Gunson, Michael Harlow, Anna Hoffman, Simon Johnson, Ian Kidman, Joanna Kidman, Marie-Claude Lambotte, Des McLean, Lachie (Lachlan) McLean, James McNeish, Alison Morgan, Jill Nicholas, Vincent O’Malley, Vincent O’Sullivan, Noel T. Robinson, Jennifer Shennan, Allan Shields, Judy Siers, Peter Wells and Redmer Yska.
I acknowledge a number of institutions that have made their material available to me, and whose staff have helped me. These include: Wellington Public Library; Rotorua Public Library; Dunedin
Public Library; Invercargill Public Library (with special thanks to Linda Teau); National Archives of New Zealand; the Alexander Turnbull Library; Wellington College Archives; MOTAT (Museum of Transport and Technology, Auckland); Rotorua Museum (with thanks to Ann Somerville and Manaaki Pene); Croydon Aircraft Company at Old Mandeville Airfield (Gore); Department of Research & Information Services, Royal Air Force Museum (London).
I am grateful for permission to reproduce the radio commentary in chapter 30: a transcription from archival recordings held by Sound Archives Nga Taonga Korero ID 31502, Jean Batten’s recordbreaking flight, 16 October 1936.
The letter from the War Office (1939) on page 301 is reproduced with the kind permission of the RAF Museum, London.
My editors Harriet Allan and Anna Rogers continue to give me support beyond the call of duty, and I can never thank them enough.
Many thanks are due, too, to Kimberley Davis and Sarah Thornton.
DURING MY RESEARCH THE FOLLOWING BOOKS AND TEXTS
were invaluable:
Batten, Jean,
Solo Flight
, Jackson & O’Sullivan, 1934
Batten, Jean,
My Life
, George G. Harrap, 1938
Batten, Jean,
Alone in the Sky
, The Airlife Publishing Company, 1979
Bell, Elizabeth S.,
Sisters of the Wind: Voices of Early Women Aviators
, Trilogy Books, 1994
Churchill, Sarah,
Keep on Dancing
, Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1981
Civil Aviation Handbook, Air Department New Zealand,
The Air Pilot
, 1939 edition
Collacott, Bertram A., ‘Memories of Stag Lane’, unpublished manuscript, RAF Museum, London
Collett, Anne,
Jean Batten and the ‘Accident of Sex’
(with Clive
Gilson), Faculty of Arts — Papers (Archive), University of Wollongong, 2009
Coward, Noël,
Future Indefinite
, Heinemann, 1954
Devliotis, Cherie,
Dancing with Delight, Footprints of the Past, Dance and Dancers in Early 20th Century Auckland
, Polygraphia, 2005
Everett, Susanne,
London: the glamour years 1919–39
, Bison Books, 1985
Haworth, Dianne and Diane Miller,
Freda Stark, Her Extraordinary Life
, HarperCollins, 2000
Horrocks, John,
Something in the Waters
, Steele Roberts, 2010
Howgego, James,
London in the Twenties and Thirties
, B. T. Batsford London, 1978
Hughes, Robert,
Rome
, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2011
Jillett, Leslie,
Wings Across the Tasman
, A. H. & A. W. Reed, 1953
Lenart, Judith (selected and compiled),
Yours Ever, Ian Fleming: Letters to and From Antony Terry
, privately published, 1994
Mackersey, Ian,
Jean Batten: The Garbo of the Skies
, Macdonald, 1990
McNally, Ward,
Smithy, The Kingsford Smith Story
, Robert Hale, 1966
McNeish, James,
Lovelock
, Hodder & Stoughton, 1986
Mulgan, David,
The Kiwi’s First Wings: The Story of the Walsh Brothers and the New Zealand Flying School, 1910–1924
, Wingfield Press, 1960
O’Malley, Vincent and David Armstrong,
The Beating Heart: A Political and Socio-Economic History of Te Arawa
, Huia, 2008
O’Reilly, Bernard,
Green Mountains
, B. O’Reilly, 1940
Pearson, John,
Ian Fleming, Creator of James Bond
, Jonathan Cape, 2007
Simpson, Tony,
The Sugar Bag Years: A People’s History of the 1930s Depression in New Zealand
, Alister Taylor Publishing, 1974
Verran, David,
The North Shore: An Illustrated History
, Random House, 2010
The Book of Secrets
A classic, prize-winning novel about an epic migration and a lone woman haunted by the past in frontier Waipu. In the 1850s, a group of settlers established a community in the northern part of New Zealand. They were led there by a stern preacher, Norman McLeod. The community had followed him from Scotland in 1817 to found a settlement in Nova Scotia, then subsequently to New Zealand via Australia. Their incredible journeys actually happened, and in this winner of the New Zealand Book Awards, Fiona Kidman breathes life and contemporary relevance into the facts by creating a remarkable fictional story of three women entangled in the migrations — Isabella, her daughter Annie and granddaughter Maria.
McLeod’s harsh leadership meant that anyone who ran counter to him had to live a life of secrets. The ‘secrets’ encapsulated the spirit of these women in their varied reactions to McLeod’s strict edicts and connect the past to the present and future.
The Captive Wife
This prize-winning novel has become a New Zealand classic. When Betty Guard steps ashore in Sydney, in 1834, she meets with a heroine’s welcome. Her survival during a four-month kidnapping ordeal amongst Taranaki Maori is hailed as nothing short of a miracle. But questions about what really happened slowly surface within the
élite governing circles of the raw new town of Sydney. Jacky Guard, ex-convict turned whaler, had taken Betty as his wife to his New Zealand whaling station when she was fourteen. After several years and two children, the family is returning from a visit to Sydney when their barque is wrecked near Mount Taranaki. A battle with local Maori follows, and Betty and her children are captured. Her husband goes to seek a ransom, but instead England engages in its first armed conflict with New Zealand Maori when he is persuaded to return with two naval ships. After her violent rescue, Betty’s life amongst the tribe comes under intense scrutiny. Based on real events, this is the compelling story of a marriage, of love and duty, and the quest for freedom in a pioneering age.
The Trouble with Fire
A beautiful collection of stories that was shortlisted for several major awards. Fiona Kidman has a genius for peeling back the lives of ordinary people to reveal their hidden passions and complexities. In this brilliant collection, she explores — with her customary subtlety and insight — how we are all touched and sometimes scarred by the flames of emotion, whether it be the impossible love of a pregnant woman for a married man, grief for a dead baby or loss of a young woman in mysterious circumstances. Ranging in time from the colonial period to the present day, these stories by one of New Zealand’s foremost writers are beautifully crafted, intriguing and evocative.
Further fiction by Fiona Kidman available in ebook format:
A Breed of Women
A Needle in the Heart
Paddy’s Puzzle
Preservation
Ricochet Baby
The Best of Fiona Kidman’s Short Stories
True Stars
At the End of Darwin Road
‘What I have to tell is largely a personal narrative about how I came to inhabit a fictional world’ This absorbing memoir explores the first half of writer Fiona Kidman’s life, notably in Kerikeri amid the ‘sharp citric scent of orange groves, bright heat and … the shadow of Asia’ — at the end of Darwin Road. From the distance of France, where Kidman spent time as the Katherine Mansfield Fellow in Menton, she reconsiders the past, weaving personal reflection and experience with the history of the places where she lived, particularly the fascinating northern settlements of Kerikeri and Waipu, and further south the cities of Rotorua and Wellington. Her story crosses paths with those of numerous different New Zealanders, from the Tuhoe prophet Rua Kenana, to descendants of the migration from Scotland led by a charismatic Presbyterian minister, to other writers and significant friends. We learn of Kidman’s struggles to establish herself as a writer and to become part of different communities, and how each worked their way into her fiction.
At the End of Darwin Road
is a vivid memoir of place and family, and of becoming a writer: ‘I was certain that … I would continue to write, if possible, every day of my life.’
Beside the Dark Pool
In her first acclaimed volume of memoir, Fiona Kidman described her background and childhood, evoking the places she lived in and the people she knew. It finished with the publication of her first, hugely successful novel. In this sequel, she explores further the influences that shaped her subsequent books, her championing of New Zealand writing and writers and the significant people she has met along the way. There are political protests, controversial stands, family quests and journeys overseas — to Europe, North America and the East — journeys that marked her hard-won independence. Beautifully
written and thought-provoking, this is an important record of the last twenty-five years.
Where Your Left Hand Rests
It’s been nearly forty years since Dame Fiona Kidman’s first book of poems was published, and here she is back with another, timed for her 70th birthday in 2010. There has been renewed interest in her poetry since the recent publication of her memoirs, and this exquisitely packaged collection will not disappoint. Ranging over wide territory, from imagining her Irish grandmothers’ arrival in New Zealand, to wearing Katherine Mansfield’s shawl, to time spent in Greece and in her garden, the poems are by turns tender and funny, candid and brave. They bear all the hallmarks of Kidman’s writing: acute observation, a telling eye for detail, a wry humour and great empathy. ‘Superb poetry. A truly lovely little book.’ —
Metro
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