4.5★s

“…for the first few months it does feel like the north-west is eating you alive. Or cooking you alive. In January, February, in March, the turquoise bay throws heat like sheet metal, and the taps piss hot, even when twisted to cold. There’s a perpetual salting of pindan on everything, and hundreds of cockroaches hatch and hitch inside the sun-singed laundry.”

Red Can Origami is the second novel by award-winning Australian author, Madelaine Dickie. Fed up with Melbourne, journalist Ava Kelly takes a job in northern Western Australia. Gubinge is a small coastal town attractive to grey nomads. It’s where barramundi fishing, drinking and cattle fill the days; the build-up to tropical storms is spectacular, the sunsets, glorious, the night crabbing, fun and bull riding, thrilling.

Ava didn’t really expect much excitement, but when, on country, she spots a bulldozer with a Gerro Blue logo parked by some recently exposed bones in close proximity to a cave filled with rock paintings, she knows there’s a story to be written.

The local Burrika mob have a land title claim pending over that place; the white land owner is notorious for his exclusion of the indigenous population; Japanese-owned Gerro Blue PR has an explanation that doesn’t quite ring true; and Ava’s editor is furious with the story that goes online, but attractive Burrika board director, Noah Ishikawa is impressed, and Ava feels a spark.

Then Ava is offered a job: Aboriginal liaison officer with the Burrika mob for Gerro Blue. It’s a tempting offer: good money, and CEO Yuma Watanabe trots out a smooth line about Gerro Blue’s intention to deal sensitively with the indigenous population and safeguard the environment. Is Ava seduced by his erudition and education? Is she naïve, or is it optimism that has her thinking she can keep them honest?

This is not a long novel, but Dickie packs quite a lot into it: the tension between the indigenous and the white population; just what rights native title confers; the dilemma facing the indigenous groups with respect to mining; the environmental impact of open-cut uranium mining; and the indigenous connection to the land, to country, all feature.

Her characters and their dialogue are credible, especially with their very human flaws: for all her strong principals, Ava’s behaviour is sometimes disappointing, perhaps even to herself. Dickie’s descriptive prose is wonderfully evocative: “As you sweat your way to sleep, you think about being under the spell of this country, think about how it’s almost too ancient, too majestic, too difficult to wrap the heart around in comprehension.”


Dickie takes the unusual step of writing in the second person, to which the reader can adapt, but sadly, her excellent novel loses half a star of the potential five-star rating for indulging in the annoying editorial affectation of omitting quote marks for speech. Dialogue is denoted with a new line, indent and dash, but this tends to interrupt the flow of the text, thus becoming a distraction. A clever cover designed by Nada Backovic encloses this (sometimes dark and gritty) tale. A powerful, brilliantly topical and thought-provoking read.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by Better Reading Preview and Fremantle Press.