Playing Beatie Bow - Ruth Park

 Playing Beatie Bow was my January pick for the 2025 Aussie Reading Challenge that I joined with Paula at Vince Review. It came under the category "Time Travel."

This was a reread for me and I'm so glad that I picked it up again. Park is one of my favourite writers (in fact you'll see her later in the challenge with another one of her books) and really captures the essence of a place in her writing. Playing Beatie Bow is set in The Rocks, a famous area of Sydney almost directly under the Harbour Bridge. Home to the traditional Gadigal First Nations People, it was also the site of the landing of the first settlers, and thus home to Sydney's first gaol, hospital and dockyard, all made from the sandstone that was the geological foundation of the landscape. 

Written in 1980, it is considered a modern Australian classic children's novel. I think it can be a bit confronting for children these days so I'd definitely recommend reading it before giving it your child. Beatie Bow is the name of a spooky children't game played at the local park outside Abigail Kirk's apartment in The Rocks. It is also the name of a little girl who has travelled to the present day from 1873, and who unwittingly takes Abigail back to the past with her. The scenes set around The Rocks during that time are vivid and full of sensory pleasures. In the book the Rocks are described as such:

    ' There were trees in Argyle Street, oaks, she thought, covered with curdy green. Many alleys spindled away, turning into flights of steps as steep as ships' companionways as they went up and over looming sandstone knobs and reefs. Sometimes houses perched on these outcrops like beached Arks; sometimes they were built into them so that the back wall of the house was living sandstone. The lanes were runnels of wet and filth between mouldering shops, factories and cottages.The whole place was cankered with poverty and neglect.' 

Can't you almost smell it?

The simple life that Abigail now finds herself in, injured and housebound with the Bow family, is a stark contrast to the fast-paced adolescent life that she has left behind. Although I wasn't a fan of Abigail's arrogant and negative disposition, I warmed to her as she began to be more sympathetic and indeed empathetic to her surroundings and her host family. One of the most poignant lines form the novel come when Abigail tries to escape back to her own time, and ends up hostage in a dirty brothel. The sick and ravaged character charged with watching over her says, "A person will do many things rather than starve." I think this was the point that Abigail began to understand more of the past rather than simply condemn it, a sign of her coming of age. 

Abigail also learns more about the migrant past of the Bow family, having originally come from the Orkney Islands, a place described as:

    ' "a queer old place, where dwarfies and painted men, Picts you might call them, lived long ago and built great first and rings of stone where a shepherd might wander and ne'er be seen again. And there are trolls, and spells to be said against them, and the children of the sea who on the sands on St John's Eve...and it was Granny's seventh grandmother, Osla, who was elf-taken while she was watching the sheep and came back from Elfland with a wean about to be born. And with that wean came the Gift."

   This precious legacy was the gift of seeing the future, of healing, of secret wisdom. '

This sense of magical realism is peppered throughout the book, not least the time travel aspect. The myths of the old Orkney ways are carried by the Bow family throughout the story. It's a beautiful trope and builds connection not only with the ancient land of Australia but also the ancient lands that many of those first settlers came from with their own traditions, customs and myths.

Abigail also experiences true love in the past - another sweet coming of age moment. It's this love that helps develop her sense of sympathy for the tragic family she is living with and opens her eyes to the plight of those around her not only in the past but also in her own time. 

Playing Beatie Bow was definitely a good book to start this writing challenge. I read many historical novels, and I forgot how beautifully written this one is. If you haven't read it already I suggest you do. Once you have, you can watch the movie made in 1986. Here's the trailer if you're interested:

Have you read Playing Beatie Bow? Do you have any other Australian classics that you'd like to recommend? I'd love to hear from you in the comments below.