Vertigo: A pastoral. The title and mode of this novella hint at its contextual foundation. A pastoral frames the idealistic longing for a simple way of life. It involves the sentimental idea that when a simple, rural way of life in commune with nature is compared with the busy striving for materialistic pleasures in the city, the natural life will be seen as an authentic and preferred lifestyle. However the author tempers this with the notion of vertigo, a loss of balance when placed in a strange environment. The two together suggest that while it may be preferable to live the rural, simple way, the transition will bring challenges including disorientation and loss of balance.

Other elements that form the background to Lohery’s novella Vertigo include references to Henry Lawson’s poem, The Bush Fire:

‘Ah, better the thud of the deadly gun, and the crash of the bursting shell,
Than the terrible silence where drought is fought out there in the western hell;
And better the rattle of rifles near, or the thunder on deck at sea,
Than the sound—most hellish of all to hear—of a fire where it should not be.’

The poem like the novella pre-empts a fire with a severe drought followed by a severe fire. Like the citizens of Garra Nalla in the novella, the characters in Lawson’s poem also regroup after the fire, ready to start life again. Lohery’s own experience of a bushfire in Tasmania is a further foundation to the story.

Lohery embeds within the text a book titled The Land that is Desolate: an Account of a Tour in Palestine about one man’s journey to the biblical promised land. The promised land, a land believed to have been promised to Abraham, father of the Israelites, lies mainly in modern day Israel. Historically, the promised land has been a site of continual source of tension for the groups who claim it as their own and of medieval crusaders whose charge it was to possess it. In some ways, the author Frederick Teves is depleted by his journey rather than spiritually uplifted by it, finding a desolate and bleak land ravaged by time and war. This notion is reflected within the characters of Vertigo through their disillusionment with societal promises both in the city and in the rural setting.