Error Australis
Ben Pobjie
Error Australis
Ben Pobjie
We’re obsessed with reality television these days yet we so often neglect the greatest reality of all: the reality of our nation, and how it came to be. In Error Australis, TV columnist, comedian and history buff Ben Pobjie recaps the history of Australia from its humble beginnings as a small patch of rapidly cooling rock, to its modern-day status as one of the major powers of the sub-Asian super-Antarctic next-to-Africa region. Pobjie recognises that history can be as gripping as any reality show - as thrilling as it is to see Delta Goodrem’s chair turn around, there is an argument that the Second World War was even more exciting - and like any good recapper, he provides an immediate, visceral sense of what it was like to be there in the moment at our nation’s defining events.
All historians know that it is only by looking at where we have been that we can understand who we are, what we stand for, and why nothing seems to work. Error Australis is a scholastic and side-splittingly funny account of a young nation that has spent many years seeking its place in the world, and almost as many years not liking what it has found.
Review
Chris Gordon
Ben Pobjie told me recently that he wrote Error Australis simply to make people laugh. However, don’t mistake this very funny book about our quite dismal, ludicrous history for a simple collection of  riffs and anecdotes. Like all clever humour this is a book based on facts. Pobjie starts at the beginning of Australia’s white history and moves deftly through the years to present day. He has divided each of our decisive events into neat chapters where he imagines the goings on of the time. For example, there are chapters on the First Fleet, the Gold Rush and on our notorious bushrangers. Pobjie has clearly done his research on Australian history, and has managed to capture the essence of our larrikin humour.
The book is dripping with irony and punchy one liners. At the end of each chapter are topics for consideration, much like a Year 10 history book from the 1980s. I laughed out loud often, and yet at the same time I did actually learn more about our past. Mainly I felt at the end of my reading a sense of complete bewilderment that so many powerful men in our past were so very stupid and made grave mistakes about each other and our environment. (My thinking regarding this phenomenon has not changed in today’s landscape.) Think along the lines of David Hunt’s Girt, combine that with an even more informal dialogue, sit back and enjoy. Pobjie has nailed our history, our shame and our humour.
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