Australian values are a prominent theme featured in various Australian novels.

Kate Constable’s novel Crow Country (2011) tells the story of fourteen-year-old Sadie Hazzard who through the ability to talk to crows discovers the confronting history of country town Boort. The novel particularly explores the Australian value ‘Honesty and Trustworthiness’. Both the best and worst of this value are evident in Sadie’s relationship with different characters and Clarry Hazzard and Jimmy Raven’s friendship. The reader is positioned to re-evaluate the importance of this value and what it means as an Australian.

 

The novel revealed the worst of ‘Honesty and Trustworthiness’ in the act of betrayal, particularly in Gerald Mortlock and Clarry Hazzard’s betrayal of their indigenous friend, Jimmy Raven, who they fought with in World War I. Clarry ignored Jimmy’s wishes and breached the trust in their friendship in a testing situation. Clarry played an essential role in helping Gerald conceal the murder of Jimmy Raven despite Clarry’s strong friendship with Jimmy and his dislike for Gerald, who murdered Jimmy. Clarry traded his friendship with Jimmy in order to save Gerald whom he owed money to. His selfish choice to lie about Jimmy’s death after he promised Jimmy to tell Netta that Jimmy loved her, instead planning to tell Jimmy’s wife that “…Jimmy’s had to go away” (p. 134), revealed his disrespect towards his past friend’s dying wish. Readers are positioned to lose the respect that they once had for Clarry as he sunk from the good man he was to the selfish man that Gerald was. In addition, Lachlan Mortlock, the sixteen-year-old boy who Sadie had a crush on, betrayed his friend’s Sadie Hazzard when she trusted him with a secret. Sadie showed Lachie about the circle of stones, a sacred indigenous place, that she had come across on “his” land. Lachie had gained Sadie’s trust after he said “It’s your special place, is it? I won’t tell anyone” (p.68). Despite Lachlan’s promise to Sadie he violated her trust when he told his dad about the sacred circle of stones and consequently his father planned on selling the significant pieces of Aboriginal culture to a museum. This highlighted that he didn’t value Sadie’s secret and he disregarded the importance of this place to her and later, to aboriginal people.

 

The best of ‘Honesty and Trustworthiness’ is displayed in the act of reliability, evident when Sadie confides in her friend Walter about a part of her life no one else knew. She trusts Walter who has become a close friend, telling him “…[about] the crows who talked to her [and about] the stones.” (p. 54) Sadie took a great risk when she allowed Walter into that secret part of her despite the fact that she thought others would have thought she was crazy. Furthermore, Walter’s Auntie Lily, an elder of the Yung Balug clan of Boort, revealed her trust and faith in Sadie despite the fact that she had only just met Sadie and that Sadie was non-Indigenous. Aunt Lily revealed her trust for Sadie when she told her  “A clever man got special things, sacred, secret” and after when she told Sadie to “Find his special things”(p.179). This displayed that Aunt Lily deeply trusted Sadie as she had faith in her to retrieve the sacred objects that were extremely significant to her culture. 

 

Crow Country reveals the best and worst of ‘Honesty and Trustworthiness’ through the betrayal that the Mortlocks and Hazzards display and through the trust that Sadie has in Walter and Walter’s Aunt Lily has in Sadie. Overall the novel suggests that ‘Honesty and Trustworthiness’ will test our morals and is the key to the strengthening and building of relationships.