Vicki Hastrich
Vicki Hastrich on writing The Great Arch
The Great Arch came about when two separate interests of mine merged. I was keen on the Harbour Bridge, for various reasons – not least because of the cinematic scale of the thing – and I was interested in the tone of certain non-fiction books written by enthusiastic amateurs, between, say, the 1920s and 1950s; those instructional books, about things like beachcombing, breeding dogs, playing lawn bowls, where the author betrays an almost rabid passion for their subject matter.
I thought it might be fun to write a novel like that and leak the narrative out between factual information as the author gradually and unwittingly reveals more of themselves – and the disastrous consequences of their obsession. So I dabbled with both those ideas and waited to see which would get the upper hand. I began researching the bridge in an ambling sort of way and came across mention of an eccentric Anglican minister, Frank Cash, who was obsessed with the bridge and wrote a book about its construction. I was hooked.
It was uncanny to find my interests so perfectly embodied in a real life figure, but that didn’t make the job of writing easy. Though I could see many things in Cash’s life – from small incidents to broad themes – which I wanted to run on with and develop, I felt anxious about this blackbirding. Was I exploiting Cash by using whatever I wished? My own character, Ralph, eventually emerged from Cash’s shadow, but I had to drag him out by the ears. It was ages before he would walk and talk confidently of his own accord.
Another major difficulty was to manage the array of facts which I wanted to include. And I had to keep the pace of the novel going while bearing mind that invented scenes must match the mood of the moment in which they were historically situated. The story strand of Lennie Gwideer’s journey (which was part fact and part fiction) also needed to be integrated.
When I was five years into the writing of this book and still didn’t have a coherent first draft, I thought I might have to give up. I felt I was juggling too many elements, too many characters – and crazy tangents like the Niagara story. But then a trusted friend read the manuscript and articulated the central theme for me. He said it was about how, in the face of immensity, human beings are always falling short. And that made a lot of sense to me. It was the unifying link between everything I’d written. Suddenly I was in control of my material in a way I’d never been before and the whole novel came together in a joyous six months of writing. I’ve never been so relieved.
Spotlight:
by Vicki Hastrich
A deeply moving novel linking two centuries, two world wars and two generations inspired by the building of the Sydney Harbour Bridge - this is an epic story of faith, obsession and love and an ordinary man, an ordinary life, made grand.