Publisher: Allen and Unwin 2004
Binding: Paperback 292 pages
ISBN: 1741142555

It's been way too long since we've had a novel from Liz Honey. The last was 2000's Remote Man (read my review here). In the meantime, we've had the delightful collection of original finger rhymes for very young children, The Moon in the Man, but I for one have been hanging out for a new novel. Honey is without doubt one of our best writers for 8-12 year olds — here books are funny, wise, adventurous in a good old-fashioned sense, and are distinctively Australian in tone, setting and language.

The Ballad of Cauldron Bay sees the welcome return of the Stella Street gang and especially Henni Octon, narrator/"author" of the earlier titles 45 and 47 Stella Street and Everything that Happened and Fiddle-back. Stella Street saw the Stella St kids unearthing the (criminal) truth about their mysterious new neighbours, who they dub the Phonies, while Fiddle-back saw the gang on a camping trip, where they discover a shocking case of environmental vandalism taking place under their very noses, while they deal with the unexpected arrival of a young client of social worker Donna, plus the untimely arrival of Donna's baby!

The Ballad of Cauldron Bay takes place just a few short months after that eventful camping trip, but it feels like the gang — or, to be precise, Henni — have grown up quite a bit. The earlier books had a kind of Enid Blyton adventure-story-innocence about them (but in a good way!), whereas in Cauldron Bay, Henni is dealing with issues more related to her being just-on-the-cusp-of-adolescence. Henni, turning 13, is looking forward to her Easter holiday at the remote Cauldron Bay with best friend Zev and some of the younger Stella Street kids.All is well for the first few days, with the kids sleeping under mosquito nets on the verandah of a wonderful old house, early swims in the bracing waters of the Bay, hearty meals and the ritual evening Frosty Fruit from the local shop. Then into the mix is thrown Tara, sent to stay at Cauldron Bay with the gang to escape the worst of her parents' imploding marriage. Henni is not at all sure she wants her holiday intruded upon by a stranger, and when Tara turns out to be a make-up wearing, fashion-magazine toting, too cool for school type, and worse yet, the other kids don't seem to mind her, Henni's worst fears are realised. Friendships change, and Henni's sense of her place in the Stella Street gang is severely challenged:

"Where’s Henni?" It was May.
"Don’t know. Don’t care." said Danielle. "She’s so crabby school-teacherish now she’s a pain."

Then, when Tara the Ruinator (as Henni calls her) forms a romance with one of the visiting (much older) surfies, and there's rumours she's going to run away with him to Perth, Henni doesn't know what to do. Does she mind her own business, or run the risk of being "school-teacherish" and let the adults know?

One the aspects of Honey's novels I've always enjoyed is the relationships between children and their extended adult "family". This is again at the fore in Cauldron Bay — there's a very touching scene between Henni and Zev's father Tibor, as Tibor finds old memories emerging of his family left behind in Prague. Children and adults in the Stella Street world deal with each other equitably, and they share a sense of mutual responsibility for each other, while fulfilling their respective "roles". (Children are still children and adults adults but there's a lovely sense of respect and affection between them — adults maintain their responsibility, but children are simultaneously permitted to sort things out for and between themselves.) A lightness of touch even when dealing with serious ideas is also a hallmark of Honey's fiction, and it's evident again in Cauldron Bay.

Henni has always been presented as the "author" of the Stella Street books, but this is even more fore-grounded in Cauldron Bay. It's a device that can often seem twee and self-referential — writers and readers are good! — but it works in the Stella Street world. In a way, Henni is making sense of things through storytelling, and in that she sits nicely into a tradition of first-person author/narrators. She also stretches her wings with poetry — Honey is herself a highly regarded poet for children — which is where the Ballad of the title comes in.

There's something distinctively Australian about Honey's novels. Setting is crucial here — be it the suburbs of Melbourne, camping trips in the bush or holidays by the sea — but it's also to do with the kind of open-hearted, free-spiritedness we like to think of as reflecting the best of the “typical” Australian childhood. In a classically Australian scene, Henni reconciles the changes in her life — and her relationship with Tara — after a life-threatening incident when the apparently benign Bay reveals the dangers beneath its surface. A bit like adolescence, really.