Here's another children's genre classic, but one from a new country. 'The Magic Pudding' is a 1918 classic from Australia and it's quintessentially Australian, set in the Australian outback where an array of Australian locals—some human, some anthropomorphic animals—go walkabout and find adventure. Apparently Lindsay, who was best known as an artist before he wrote this book, did so because one of his friends suggested that kids down under liked reading about fairies. He had to disagree, convinced that they wanted to read about "food and fighting" instead, so he wrote this and it's never been out of print in the century since. It's also been adapted into a movie, a play, a puppet show and even an opera.

The story is almost nonexistent, but then that's kind of the point of walkabout. This is a peculiarly Aboriginal concept, in which someone wanders away from their life for an indeterminate time to find a new purpose or harmonise with the land. As I understand it, the purpose of a walkabout is entirely personal, so it seems fair for Bunyip Bluegum to set out just because he's fed up with his uncle's whiskers. I should add that even his name is quintessentially Australian, because a bunyip is a swamp cryptid and bluegums are species of eucalyptus. Put together, Bunyip Bluegum is our protagonist, a highly educated, exceedingly polite koala bear.

Bunyip isn't particularly prepared for walkabout, taking only a walking stick with him, and so he's a little hungry by the time it gets to lunchtime. Fortunately, he meets a couple of fellow travellers who welcome him into their fold. One is human, a diminutive sailor called Bill Barnacle, the other an even shorter emperor penguin named Sam Sawnoff. I don't think they're on walkabout; they're professional wanderers or swagmen, in the terminology of Banjo Paterson's famous bush ballad, Waltzing Matilda, people who carry their belongings in a swag on their back.

Bill and Sam have solved the problem of food not by being adept at finding bush tucker but by the plot convenience of owning a magic pudding. This plot device is never explained, merely accepted. It's a sentient creature with legs, as well as a perpetual food source. Eat it and it'll replenish very quickly, however much you consume. Whistle and turn it around a couple of times and it'll become the pudding of your choice. Given that Aussies use the word "pudding" like Brits, that means that they can chow down on steak and kidney pudding for a main course, then whistle, turn it a couple of times and dive in to apple dumpling pudding for dessert. This pudding is called Albert.

And, of course, such a godsend promptly becomes a MacGuffin, with the vast majority of the book dedicated to this fellowship, each a self-dubbed member of the Noble Society of Pudding Owners, trying to keep hold of Albert while a couple of pudding thieves—namely a possum called Patrick and a wombat named Watkin—attempt to steal him away for themselves. Most of the adventures that the characters have concern the latest plan the villains manifest to steal the magic pudding, which is often successful, and what our heroes have to go through to get Albert back, right down to punching them on the nose as they do so.

To pass the time in between such sections, they sing. A lot. Thinking back, it's easy to think of this book as constantly bouncing between three different approaches: prose, which moves our story forward; song, recounted in verse; and Lindsay's wonderful drawings that turn the whole package into visual form. These latter are hand-drawn and shaded in pencils and they're vivid and realistic portrayals of utterly imaginative action.

What all this means is that this becomes a sort of musical take on the 'Roadrunner' cartoons, with a set of similar stories unfolding in different fashion, merely rooted in Australian flavour and with the laws of physics adhered to throughout, except when it comes to the magic pudding itself. It's safe to say that Lindsay could have kept on writing and created a book infinitely longer than the one he did without actually having to conjure up a new story. All such an endless extension would need is endless imaginative variations on a theme to echo the neverending verses of 'The Ballad of the Salt Junk Sarah', the folk song that our heroes sing the most.

While Lindsay wrote 'The Magic Pudding' in 1918, making it just over a century old now, it feels as if it belongs in the Victorian era a couple of decades earlier still, when the common people had to make their own entertainment for the most part and so sang as families. I'm sure parents today would be able to sit down with their little ones and read this book to them, but they might feel a little bit weird having to sing half of it. Of course, if they want to do that, there are versions of at least 'The Ballad of the Salt Junk Sarah' on  YouTube, so they can find the melody and meter.

I love this as an idea and I love this as a poet. I can't say I love the story because there really isn't one, but I do love the free spirited nature of what goes down. It feels like we're right there with a koala bear, a sailor and a penguin, with no cares in the world whatsoever except having to prevent a possum and a wombat from stealing our pudding. Given the polarisation of modern life and the daily frustrations of work in corporate America, that seems like a slice of heaven. And, of course, if we merely whistle and turn it round a couple of times, it'll be sticky toffee pudding instead. ~~ Hal C F Astell