30/11/2022
š Literary Map Book Recommendation: The Alert Grey Twinkling Eyes of C. J. DeGaris by David Nichols
ā
šBased in the South West region, Western Australiaā
ā
Entrepreneur, aviator, publisher, publicist, propagandist, playwright, songwriter, motorist, land developer, dreamer: for five brief years it seemed like there was nothing Clement John DeGaris couldnāt do. Heād talk you into investing your life savings with a promise of doubling them in a year and then, when he lost them, heād talk you into giving him more. He was dashing, patriotic, handsome, fearless and funny: men and women adored him. Heād put a āsecond storeyā on Mildura with his marketing skills and tenacious work in the fruit, irrigation and land industries; he was going to build a new home afresh at Kendenup, Western Australia. Along the way, he wrote and sold books and plays, songs, suburbs and a host of other equally remarkable schemes. There seemed to be little that C. J. DeGaris couldnāt achieve: he was a new kind of Australian man, modern, quick-witted, unflappable. David Nichols tells the story of this extraordinary comet in the Australian sky of a century ago with a vigour, humour and empathy appropriate to DeGaris himself. The tragedy that the man brings upon himself and his family, and the cruelty of fate, make a universal story as well as an unexplored piece of Australian history that stretches from the birth of Mildura, through to the South Australian settlement of Pyap, to the exciting creation of a new kind of ācolonyā at Kendenup, and Melbourneās roaring twenties.
ā
ā
