Lawn and order: aesthetics and architecture in Australian suburbia

Abstract

Aside from its simple strength as a great story, George Johnston's novel My Brother Jack (1964) continues to impress for its evocation of life in Australia during the inter-war years. Few other works of fiction, or non-fiction for that matter, can match the force and economy of its use of some of the more culturally telling manners, mores and material culture of daily life in the period. Johnston's cultural acuity is typically sharp in his use of the developing suburban passion for lawn in the 1930s. Lawn acts as the catalyst for the protagonist's rising disaffection for the garden suburb of Beverley Park Gardens Estate. Within a few months of moving in, David Meredith finds himself clawing at the ‘granulated plaster walls’ of the late 1930s' red brick bungalow that he and his new wife have built.