Journal of Australian Colonial History: Book Reviews
Vol. 11, 2009
Andrea Scott Inglis, Summer in the Hills: The Nineteenth-Century Mountain Resort in Australia, Australian Scholarly Publishing, North Melbourne, 2007, pbk, ISBN 1 74097 127 2, xxiii + 247 pp, $44.00.
Summer in the Hills is an informative, attractively presented, and well-written book. It successfully combines historical fact with actual voices from the past, a technique which adds a sense of immediacy and realism to the narrative. As such, an evolving sense of relationship with, and reaction to, mountain environments over a period of time is sympathetically and evocatively portrayed. Rather than adhering to a 'persuasive stereotype' which tends to emphasise mountain retreats as 'steadfast enclaves of Britishness' similar to those established in India, Inglis successfully argues that the 'hill stations' of the Australian colonies need to be understood as more complex entities.
The book commences with a useful summary of the mountain hill stations in Australia which flourished during the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. However, maps of the local areas depicting the resorts in relation to the better-known cities would have been very useful as I found myself, not being a Victorian, wondering after the first two lines of the Introduction exactly where Mount Macedon was in relation to Melbourne. In Chapter 1 a useful overview is presented of changing attitudes on the continent and in Britain towards mountains and mountain scenery, as aesthetic appeal and a sense of romance take over from a certain distrust of the perceived rugged unsightliness and inherent dangers of mountain 'wildernesses'. By the nineteenth century, says Inglis, European and British mountain scenery was called upon as a yardstick by which to judge the Australian landscape, as mountain retreats became popular with well-heeled city dwellers.
Next follows a very informative chapter describing hill stations in India, around which the concept of mountain retreats in Australia supposedly evolved. The next chapter, 'Colonial Connections', demonstrates the various links between India and Australia during the nineteenth century, in particular with regard to the habit of retreating to the hills in the heat of summer. Details of Australia's interaction with India by way of trade and tourism, although a little too detailed in relation to the topic of the book, have been well researched and provide an interesting backdrop for what is to come. The chapter on health, the excuse many members of élite society used to retreat to the hills, is also very informative.
The author then goes on to describe the development of European gardens in the mountains and, in doing so, now gets to what I was expecting from the sub-title The Nineteenth-Century Mountain Resort in Australia. A lively and entertaining discussion follows as to the design of homes, sporting activities, and social attractions in the hilltop stations of Australia. The book concludes with a comparison between mountain resorts and the growing popularity of beach resorts in the twentieth century.
This topic would be of interest to a wide audience, in particular readers from a more mature age group. However, there are several features that might discourage such an audience. First of all, the font size is too small, making reading a strain. The beautiful illustrations also suffer from size constraints. Second, there is too much detail and repetition in the first half of the book which, although of academic interest, is not strictly relevant to the theme, and could therefore have been more carefully edited. Cost constraints, which may have originally dictated the dimensions of the book, might perhaps have been overcome by a reduction in the length of the written text.
As far as marketing goes, this book falls into a problematic void between an academic dissertation, well argued with ample support material, and a text that might appeal to a wider audience. As I have suggested, this could have been easily rectified by cutting the first four chapters down by at least a third, and increasing the font size and general dimensions of the book to make it more amenable to various age groups, and to those more interested in specific details concerning 'The Nineteenth-Century Mountain Resort in Australia'. This would not, in my opinion, have affected the book's value as an academic reference, and would almost certainly have increased its popularity in a wider sense. Further, although maps may have been left out to make way for the interesting and informative paintings and drawings, there is some scope for deletions, to be replaced with explicit diagrams depicting where hilltop homes and hotels were situated in relation to the cities from whence the mountain dwellers retreated in summer. Therefore, while the attractive appearance of this book, in particular the cover, might entice some readers, and the carefully researched contents will certainly be of value to social historians and the like, I feel there are other factors that will make this book less attractive to the general public.
The problem of transforming a formal dissertation into a text that appeals to a wider audience is something with which most academics have to grapple at some stage. Creative editing is, of course, of paramount importance. However, more practical concerns such as font size and clarity of pictorial texts must not be overlooked. That said, Summer in the Hills is a useful and informative book, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
Meg Vivers
Citation: Journal of Australian Colonial History, Vol. 9, 2009, pp. 205-07.