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towards the bush and Aborigines. The ‘Jindys’, as they were known, opposed what they saw as the Eurocentric
outlook then dominating Australian literature. Robinson argued that Australian poets ought to remove the ‘imported
menagerie’ of ‘satyrs, fauns, nymphs, pans, elves, pixies and fairies’ that lived in the imagined Australian bush and
‘reinstate the indigenous inhabitants.’ During his time in the Territory he met and became friendly with a fellow
Jindy poet William Hart-Smith and the author Bill Harney.
Robinson worked for some time at Deep Well, a railway fettlers’ camp 80 kilometres south of Alice Springs.
One of his best-known poems, ‘Deep Well’, is based on his experiences there. John Ramsland later described it as
evoking the ‘flashing colour images, the isolated spirit and the mystical sensuous beauty of the place.’ The poem
begins: ‘I am at Deep Well where the spirit-trees/writhe in cool white limbs and budgerigar-/green hair along the
watercourse carved out/in deep red earth, a red dry course that goes/past the deep well, past the ruined stone/
homestead where the wandering blacks make camp... ’ He also later described the place in his autobiographical
work The Drift of Things (1973). In another poem set in the same area, ‘Desert Oaks’, he dealt with the close links
between Aborigines and the physical environment.
During 1947, he spent six months in Darwin, where he was with the Department of Works and Housing.
Later in the 1940s, he worked in the Roper River area. Here he composed poems such as ‘Black Cockatoos’,
which were later to be regarded as among his finest work.
His Territory poems were ultimately published in several volumes, including, most notably, Language of the
Sand (1949) and Deep Well (1962). ‘Each poem that Robinson produced’, Ramsland wrote, ‘was sculpted with a
deep sense of place which harmonised with the character and texture of its subject. He searched for fresh language
that would bring his responses alive on the page: sight, hearing, taste, smell and “the great colour images of this
land”.’ Many of his Territory writings, the authors of The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature observed,
explored a ‘pantheistic vision of the land and its primal inhabitants, the Aborigines.’
After leaving the Territory, he returned to New South Wales, where he worked in many occupations, including
jockey, horse trainer, ballet dancer and journalist. He married twice but had no children. He ultimately settled
in Belmont, near Lake Macquarie, in the late 1970s. Several of his prose collections published in the 1950s and
1960s, such as Legend and Dreaming (1952) and Aboriginal Myths and Legends (1966) contained material on
Aboriginal lore he had acquired during his time in the Territory. Robinson was back there briefly in, he later
recalled, ‘about 1954’ and returned once more as Writer in Residence at the Darwin Community College in 1983.
The new Darwin amazed him. ‘I’ve seen changes’, he stated, ‘which I didn’t dream about, didn’t really think
would happen.’ He was impressed with the city’s natural beauty and its ‘blending of races’ but expressed deep
concerns about mining, especially of uranium, the gradual disappearance of Aboriginal traditions and the activities
of multi national companies.
He received many awards and honours, including Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 1988 and an
Honorary Doctorate of Letters at the University of Newcastle in 1991. He died in Belmont on 8 February 1992 and
was buried at Belmont Cemetery. A memorial service was held at All Saint’s Anglican Church, Belmont.
Robinson’s poems and other writings with Territory settings did much to turn many Australian readers towards
a greater feeling for their country’s unique landscapes and cultural traditions. He was, according to the The Oxford
Companion to Australian Literature, ‘the best and most dedicated of the Jindyworobak poets.’
D Headon & T Scanlon, ‘Interview with DCC’s Writer in Residence, Roland Robinson’, in Northern Perspective, vol 6, Nos 1 & 2, 1984;
D Headon, North of the Ten Commandments, 1991; P Pierce (ed), The Oxford Literary Guide to Australia, 1987; J Ramsland, ‘Roland
Robinson’, in History, August 1992; W H Wilde, J Hooton & B Andrews, The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature, 1985.
DAVID CARMENT, Vol 2.
RODERICK, CHRISTABEL JOHANNA (CHRISTA) nee LITCHFIELD also PERRON (1916–1991),
charity and community worker, was born in Pine Creek, Northern Territory on 3 October 1916, the fifth of seven
children of Val Litchfield and his wife Jessie Sinclair nee Phillips.
Christa came from true Territory pioneering stock. Her parents met on board a ship in 1907 and married in
Darwin in 1908 at the Methodist Church in Knuckey Street. The next day they left for West Arm, then one of the
most important mining fields in the Territory. Val was a diamond driller and for the next several years he and Jessie
travelled to wherever the diamond drills were sent—Anson Bay, Brocks Creek, the Ironblow Mine and eventually
Pine Creek, where Val found work on a mine at Union Reefs and Jessie and their growing family settled down in
a bark humpy a few kilometres from Pine Creek. It was here that Christa was born, joining three brothers, Val,
Boyne and Frank, and a sister, Betty.
In 1917, when Christa was about nine months old, the family moved to Darwin, where Val found work with
Vestey’s newly opened meatworks. They settled down to life in nearby Parap where two more children, Ken and
Grace, were born. Christa and her brothers and sisters had a happy and eventful childhood. Their mother, Jessie,
was a prolific writer and journalist, and her work brought the family into contact with many interesting people,
including most of Australia’s early aviators who landed in Darwin during their record breaking flights between
England and Australia. Christa had fond memories of those days, which she described in an interview in 1980:
‘The first house I remember was at the Two and a Half Mile, then called Parapparap. It was a large house, built of
bush timber and corrugated iron, with ant bed floors. I remember when the verandah was built. We collected the
ant bed, crushed it and it was then stamped down with a steel stamper which made very hard floors which lasted
for years.
We had a very happy childhood. After school and after we finished our chores, we would be taken on bush
walks by the Aborigines who taught us how to live in the bush, telling us which fruit, plums and yams were edible
and which ones would make us sick. They also took us to the beach and taught us the same things about crabs, fish