Review of Back to Bangka
Back to Bangka
By Georgina Banks
Penguin Random House 2023
The Review
I met Georgina Banks at the place many Australian writers consider their one true church: the big yellow house called Varuna. I can’t remember if we met over dinner, or in the hallway lugging in our bags. But once we spent time talking about what we were working on, I was fascinated by her project.
I think our longer conversation happened after we’d high-galloped it up to a back street in Katoomba to buy wine at a fancy bottle shop. As we sat beside the fire in the living room, quaffing the red we’d bought, she explained she was writing a book about her great-aunt Dorothy Elmes, part narrative, part memoir – and the research she’d undertaken to reveal the true story about an evacuated ship full of Australian army nurses and civilians fleeing Singapore in 1942. For more than half a century, the true story of what had happened to the nurses and the other survivors on the beach at Bangka Island (an isolated spot east of Sumatra in Indonesia), had been supressed. Georgina was trying to disclose the reality. Once she fully understood it. And battling with ethical questions, notions of responsibility, concerned about the ramifications such a book might provoke.
A few years later and Back to Bangka, published by Penguin Random House has been released. And it is an intriguing and gutsy achievement, both distressing and inspirational at the same time. With extensive ground to cover, the book is cleverly structured into three rough sections allowing us to easily access the story of Dorothy, the cover-up of the facts and Georgina’s scholarly journey. Interspersed between the fictional narrative and the memoir, lie the inclusion of original letters from Bud (the nickname given to Georgina’s great-aunt) describing her work and impressions of World War ll, Singapore. The letters offer an insight into a woman who is both brave and cheerful, someone from an earlier era who understood duty and sacrifice and I found myself genuinely caring about her.
‘[from Malaya, 1942] … did two days work at the C.C.S (Casualty Clearing Station) which was very interesting, wish we could have stayed there but we are now in quite a nice place. Old and very dirty but we have had a good bit of cleaning scrubbing and scouring etc. Externally, it is most picturesque, built early in the eighteenth century (or looks like it), situated in beautiful grounds nice trees and lawn; also, some nice air raid shelters (we hope) as am getting quite partial to getting there first to avoid the rush...’
There is also the fictionalised narrative of Bud’s experiences on the ship, the Vyner Brooke, both the bombing and afterwards when she was stranded on the beach. ‘Second night on the beach. Again the bonfire blazes, its flames incandescent thanks to the oil-soaked wood. Bud has been on duty for the latter half of the night while searchlights cut the darkness. Japanese boats, she assumes… Despite the nurses’ efforts, their patients are getting weaker by the hour – as are the nurses… She feels dizzy and unbalanced, as though she could topple over at any moment. Her body, particularly her ribs, aches as though it has been battered with fists. What she would do for a cigarette, and food…’
Finally, Georgina summarises the years of hard work and conflicting emotion she went through discovering the truth about what her aunt and the others suffered. ‘I stood up. I needed to move. I did not wish to bruise their memory either, was desperate for it not to be true. But it is already out, I thought, whether we like it or not. Journalists, historians, PhD students, they weren’t going to stop theorising if they were interested in the story. The lid was well and truly off. Look around, I felt like yelling, we have royal commissions, #MeToo, Harvey Weinstein in the dock. Does staying silent protect the victims or the perpetrators?’
And my thoughts and feelings? I loved it. I was struck with respect for a woman I never knew. And filled with admiration for the scholarship demonstrated by the author and her determination to draw back the curtain on this incident, allowing the nurses to step into the light where they belong.
Back to Bangka combines everything I find satisfying in a book. I learnt about things I didn’t know; I was a fly on the wall to some superb detective work and I read a story about a woman who was as fine as any you will ever meet. Georgina Banks writes in her Author’s note about ‘… what is hidden and what is told.’ Indeed. To address such secrets she does a remarkable job of drawing historical threads together and creating a story and a character that reminds us about one extraordinary human paradox – the brutality and heartlessness man is capable of and the determination and courage we hold inside ourselves required to challenge and expose such inhumanity.
