I'm rather in love with Rex Ingamells, the fixated and sometimes self-righteous Australian poet who pioneered the Jindyworobak movement in the 1930s, but whose career fluttered up and down until an early death in the 1950s.

This, his book-length poem, was rather celebrated at the time, although part of this was due to savvy marketing (Melbourne's major bookstores had window displays full of copies) and a momentary general public interest in culture related to Australiana. It's an exploration (pardon the pun) of the many men who sought to find the Great South Land, from the Spaniards and the Dutch to Captain Cook and Furneaux. Ingamells had a lifelong fascination with exploration and grand ambition, and this volume exemplifies that.

The poem is inarguably too long, too diffuse, and perhaps rarely a masterpiece. There are moments that coruscate, but also many moments that read as history factoids turned brutally into lines of blank verse. (The endnotes, too, are often rather bathetic, whether it's Ingamells giving brief intros to such famed personages as Alexander the Great or when he's noting the dates that he wrote certain segments, perhaps consciously leaving academic tidbits for researchers of future generations. Which, as said researcher, thankyou, but it's all a bit much.)

I write this review not to criticise but so the book is not without some commentary on Goodreads. (I may return to update this further down the path of my research.) This is a moment in Australian literary history that is undeservedly forgotten, but it is also far from Ingamells' most inspired work. ( )