I had not heard of Russell Guy before reading this essay. Two things strike me in this engaging reflection. First, he tells the story of the writer struggling to have his writing known in a time when ideology predominates over truth and worth. Second, he presents a rebalancing of the narrative about European settlement and its effect on Aboriginal people. The inevitable historical meeting was not one-sided, and Christianity is given its rightful place. I’ve noted the titles of his two novels with the intention of reading them.
*****
Russell Guy: ‘Two things of which I’m certain: a nation that rejects its Christian foundation will go the way of Great Britain, and fiction that focuses on the spiritual consequences of individual lives can effect its redemption.
Spirituality and Modern Australian Fiction
Russell Guy, Quadrant, Jul 08 2026
Adapted from talks given by the author at the Alice Springs Public Library and Winton Writers Festival in June 2026.
I’m interested in spirituality and modern Australian fiction because that’s how my writing has developed and been influenced. The last three verses of Henry Lawson’s ‘The Good Samaritan’, written in 1904, is, I believe, because he was so often desperately in need of one, a classic example:
‘Once on a time there lived a man,’
But he has lived alway,
And that gaunt, good Samaritan
Is with us here to-day;
He passes through the city streets
Unnoticed and unknown,
He helps the sinner that he meets —
His sorrows are his own.
He shares his tucker on the track
When things are at their worst
(And often shouts in bars outback
For souls that are athirst).
To-day I see him staggering down
The blazing water-course,
And making for the distant town
With a sick man on his horse.
He’ll live while nations find their graves
And mortals suffer pain —
When colour rules and whites are slaves
And savages again.
And, after all is past and done,
He’ll rise up, the Last Man,
From tending to the last but one —
The good Samaritan.’
Verse as good as any Bob Dylan has written.
In 1978, I wrote a story, published in Tracks surfing magazine, called What’s Rangoon to You is Grafton to Me. I adapted it to radio for Sydney’s 2JJ and it crossed-over to Radio National. Since then, it’s been pirated via the Internet and a perpetual link at the ABC.
Rangoon contains glimpses into New Age spirituality, with fragments of Christianity and Islam, as the anonymous protagonist, driving all-night from Brisbane to Sydney, ponders the Second Coming of “you know Who”, while jellyfish flap across the Pacific Highway in a nod to surrealism.