In Hugh Anderson's book on Australian children's authors and illustrators, The Singing Roads (1965), the New Zealand-born writer and illustrator David Hunter Gilmore reflected:
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“I have stood a dozen times at the portals of my lazy man's workshop and watched my characters march away into the wide world, and have thought to myself, if in their passing they have carried something of my own ideas and ideals with them – if in some future time someone, somewhere, looks back nostalgically to a distant childhood made just one tiny ray the brighter because of one line I have drawn, one phrase I have written – then, surely they have not traveled in vain.”
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 D. H. Gilmore is a name most likely unfamiliar to readers today and all his books are probably now out of print. Nevertheless, I can happily claim to be one reader who has validated the travels of his characters, for the book I remember that made the strongest impact upon me as a child was Gilmore's Antony Ant and the Earwig Pirates.
I still have my copy, minus the dust jacket unfortunately, and note that Angus & Robertson first published it in 1942 and that the copy I possess is a 1949 reprint. I must have been around 4 or 5 when it was given to me and both the text and the illustrations had a powerful effect on my young imagination. Even now, when I turn the pages again after not having looked at it for quite some time, I still feel something of the emotions it stirred in me years ago.
Antony became my firm friend and kindred spirit. An ordinary, unprepossessing little ant, he was not strong or brave and possessed a marked predisposition to idleness (in the best sense of the word, of course!). Nevertheless, despite stumbling into dangerous 'adventures' he managed to find within himself an ability to survive and even come out of it all as a hero. I liked that and, for better or worse and though I can't say I had many adventures or ever became a hero (except in my imagination), Antony turned into something of a role model.
 Later, reading Hugh Anderson's book, I discovered that Antony also reflected the “escapist” Gilmore's own preference for an imaginative idleness as opposed to the frantic workaholic world view of Antville and our own 'real' world. Young Antony “couldn't see much fun in a life that was all hard work and no play” so “he would steal quietly away and lie under a shady leaf, dreaming of a world full of exciting adventures”. But, of course, the stuffy old elders of Antville eventually found him and gave him all the worst jobs in the village. In desperation he tied all his worldly possessions into a red handkerchief and ran away, eventually finding himself a job delivering new wings to the Red Admiral (butterfly) whose navy was searching for the fierce pirate Ernest the Earwig.
Inevitably Antony, tempted to try the wings out himself, delivered damaged goods and found himself confined to the cookhouse of the Admiral's ship, peeling potatoes. Day after day the ship cruised in search of Ernest until a terrifying storm blew up and an enormous wave hit the ship, washing our hero into the ocean inside the large cooking pot he was cleaning. He floated for ages until his pot was washed up on the sandy beach of a strange island. Yes, you guessed it! Antony had discovered the hideout of Ernest and his gang and was soon captured and taken to face the pirate captain. Ernest “was armed to the teeth with sword and dagger and gun, while the strong pair of nippers in his tail clicked as they opened and shut in a most fearsome manner”.
 “Please Mr. Earwig,” said Antony. “I'm not a spy at all. I was washed ashore in the cook-pot.” “Aha!” said Ernest. “He admits it himself! Of course he's a spy. In a cook-pot and on my private beach! Take him away and bring me a large plate of spy soup in an hour or I'll hang everybody from the yard-arm at sunset!” So, Antony was placed inside the cooking pot once more and dry kindling arranged beneath him. Things looked bleak for the little adventurer.
However, fortune smiled on Antony and just as the fire was about to be lit, the pirates found they had forgotten their matches and went off in search of some, leaving Antony in the pot – but with his legs untied! Out he popped and freeing his hands with a sword he found lying on the sand, began to climb some rough steps cut in the cliff face behind the beach. As the pirates prepared to chase after him, the Red Admiral's ship sailed into view. Ernest and his gang went into panic mode and headed for the very steps that Antony had climbed. They came round a sharp corner straight into Antony's sword and the whole gang lurched backwards off balance and tumbled all the way back down to the beach – to the feet of the waiting Red Admiral!
When Antony descended he was cheered loudly by the whole of the Admiral's crew of water beetles. He returned home to Antville as a hero and all the ant elders declared that they “always knew that young Antony would be a credit to the village!”
Antony Ant and the Earwig Pirates was republished by Angus & Robertson in 1979, along with two other Gilmore favourites The Tale of Gregory Grasshopper and The Cruise of the 'Saucy Walnut', in a one-volume edition that contained all three stories.
 Born in New Zealand in 1904, David Hunter Gilmore found employment in teaching, journalism and advertising - “about the only places in this modern age in which such skills as mine have any marketable value”. Having crossed the Tasman he lived in both Sydney and Tasmania. His first children's story, The Remarkable Adventures of Cuthbert the Caterpillar and Wilfred the Wasp, traveled the rounds of the publishers for fourteen years before making it into print in 1941. He also wrote for adults under the name 'David Orr'. Gilmore returned to New Zealand and died in Christchurch in 1982.
His story and illustrations of Antony Ant will always occupy a fond and sunny place among my memories of childhood. Indeed, my general lack of ambition in worldly affairs, much lamented by my mother, may well be down to Gilmore. In the heady days of the 1960s, if I'd ever had the drive to learn a musical instrument and become a rock musician, I might have named my band Antony Ant & the Earwig Pirates! Come to think of it, wasn't there an ant named Adam in the pop business back in the musically forgettable 1980s? I'm sure we would have been better than him!
References:
- ANDERSON, Hugh. The Singing Roads: A Guide to Australian Children's Authors and Illustrators, Surry Hills [Sydney]: The Wentworth Press, 1965, pages 29-31.
- LEES, Stella & MACINTYRE, Pam. The Oxford Companion to Australian Children's Literature, Melbourne: OUP, 1993, page 182.
© John Low
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