Walk a Mile and Get Nowhere by Ivan Southall

First published: 1970; published simultaneously in the United Kingdom under the title Bread and Honey

Type of work: Psychological realism

Themes: Coming-of-age and emotions

Time of work: The late twentieth century

Recommended Ages: 10-13

Locale: Deakin Beach, Australia

Principal Characters:

• Michael Cameron (Mick), a thirteen-year-old Australian boy who frets at what he considers meaningless conventions
• Dad (Dr. G. D. Cameron), a completely rational scientist with no sense of poetry or religion
• Grandma, who lives with Michael and his father (her son); she is emotional, religious, and inclined to superstition
• Jillian Farlow, the eleven-year-old neighbor girl who likes Michael
• Ray Farlow, Jillian’s brother
• Mr. Farlow, Jillian and Ray’s father; he is a good citizen, a war hero who marches in the Anzak Day parade
• Mrs. Farlow, Jillian and Ray’s mother, a former Red Cross nurse in war; she does not like Michael
• Bruce (Bully Boy) Macbaren, a big fifteen-year-old who likes to harass and occasionally punch Michael
• Warren (Flackie) Flack, Bully Boy’s sidekick; he is smaller, unpopular, not too smart, and feels important around Bully Boy
• Margaret Hamworth, a little girl who tags along after Michael

The Story

Thirteen-year-old Michael Cameron wakes up thinking he has missed the school bus. He lives with his grandmother and father, who is on a business trip. Then he remembers that it is Anzak Day (Australian War Memorial Day), a holiday. Standing nude and looking out at the rain, Mick wants to run out and roll in the grass, but when he did it before, Mrs. Farlow complained because Jillian saw him through a hole in the fence. His father is a scientist who has no interest in religion or poetry; Gran takes an interest in nothing but religion and poetry. They both agree that he need not worry about running out once that way, but that it would not be good to do it again. Mick runs out naked and rolls on the wet lawn anyway. Coming in, he gets dressed and thinks he may be crazy and wonders about Anzak Day, which he does not understand.

The Farlow family gets ready for the parade. Mrs. Farlow wears her Red Cross uniform. She does not like Mick. Mick fixes breakfast, remembering his mother doing it. He thinks of his father, a defense adviser who hates war and thinks Anzak Day foolish. Grandma loves Anzak Day and all living things except poisonous mice. Things are never simple.

While Grandma sleeps, Michael walks to the parade and to amuse himself plays God by crushing some snails and not others. As with soldiers in battle, their life is a matter of chance. He walks down 198 steps to Deakin Beach. His mother fell from the eleventh step and was killed. Grandma said she went to heaven, but Dad doubted there was a heaven. Running into the road, Mick nearly gets hit by the Farlow’s car. They give him a ride, but Mrs. Farlow’s perfume makes him sneeze. She says that he is spreading germs and they put him out at the War Memorial.

Bully Boy MacBaren harasses Michael to tears. A little girl named Margaret comes up, babbles about her magic ring, and tags along. Ray watches his father lead the parade and remembers how his father shot thirteen men with a machine gun during the war “because he didn’t like bullies.”

Margaret chatters about being kidnapped, turns into a mouse, and pretends to escape. Mick starts home and she follows for a while, but then walks right into the sea. Mick swims after her, yelling at her to stop. Suddenly his hair is grabbed and she “rescues” him; he is annoyed. When she takes off her outer clothes, he is shocked and tells her to get dressed. She urges him to undress. Instead, he lectures her as his father did him. Carrying her wet clothes, she disappears ahead, falls on a reef, and cuts her head.

He finds her apparently dead. Frightened, he wonders what to do, and then she revives. They see Bully Boy, Flackie, and Ray. Mick is afraid that Margaret might say he hurt her. The boys taunt them, so Mick takes her and they swim close together. Feeling fiercely protective, he orders her to put on her clothes. Her dress tangles in her hair and he helps her. The boys watch and yell “take it off.” After the dress gets untangled they run off, pursued by the boys. Margaret gets a stitch and falls. Mick feels that he has failed her, just as soldiers shot in war have failed in a sense. He fights Flackie, Ray runs off, and Margaret leaves with Bully Boy. Ray follows Mick admiringly and invites him to his house. “Maybe later,” Mick responds, and goes home to Grandma, who is sad about missing the parade. Mick says he will put on his suit and that they will go lay a wreath at the War Memorial.

Context

Ivan Southall is Australia’s best-known and most highly awarded writer of children’s literature. He received the Australian Children’s Book of the Year Award for four of his books Ash Road (1966), To the Wild Sky (1971), Bread and Honey (published in the United States as Walk a Mile and Get Nowhere, 1970), and Fly West (1976). He also received the American Library Association award for Notable Book for Walk a Mile and Get Nowhere in 1970.

The subject of Anzak Day (the Australian War Memorial Day) in Walk a Mile and Get Nowhere has deep personal meaning for Southall, who received the Distinguished Flying Cross as a Royal Australian Air Force pilot during World War II.

Danger and stress are common features of his work, and he is noted for novels portraying groups of children facing disastrous situations, as in Hills End (1962), Ash Road (1965), and To the Wild Sky (1967), which require of them great courage and intelligence even to survive. Geoffrey Fox remarks that Southall “offers his readers a criticism of life which is often excruciating...in its insistence upon the pain, disillusionment and embarrassed failures which are integral to adolescence....He writes of loss and consequent grief; the loss of parents, the loss of home, self-awareness. . . .” In a statement that applies to many of Southall’s books, A Times Literary Supplement review of To the Wild Sky remarks that it “is a book in which children will recognize themselves, but one in which adults may find it disconcerting to recognize their children.”

Southall has also been accused of concocting “contrived,” incredible plots, long on lyricism, short on clarity and “riddled with defects,” but it is generally agreed that he tells a gripping, suspenseful tale. One otherwise critical reviewer finally notes that each of his books carefully explores some new situation.

The themes of loss and struggle have roots in Southall’s own life. He says, “As a lad, the death of my father cut my education short, and professionally, for good or bad, I am self-trained,” and this certainly seems evident in the recurrent theme in Southall’s books, “that we survive not through external circumstances but because of whatever qualities we can dredge out of ourselves.” Walk a Mile and Get Nowhere bears this message of the importance of strength of personal character.