AustLit

'In Robert Drewe's newest novel, Whipbird, disparate branches of the Cleary family tree gather for a weekend to celebrate both the 160th anniversary of their ancestor's arrival in Australia and the opening of Hugh Cleary's titular Whipbird vineyard. (In an early bit of humor, we learn the reason Hugh has chosen the 160th rather than the more recognizably significant 150th anniversary is that ten years earlier, everyone forgot.) In a suave satiric critique of the public's willful historical ignorance, Drewe shows guests amusingly unimpressed to learn that their ancestor Conor Cleary played a role in the 1854 miners' uprising at the Eureka Stockade, an event that is also celebrating its 160th anniversary: "Some of the adults recalled a school history lesson on Australia's small, swift civil war…. Who could remember the date involved when there wasn't even a public holiday for it?" (72). Hugh himself seems comically oblivious that their ancestor was a soldier (fighting on the side of the British) and not a miner.' (Introduction)