TITLE: REMEMBERING BABYLON
AUTHOR: DAVID MALOUF
PUBLISHER: PANTHEON; 200 PAGES; $20
THE BOTTOM LINE: An Australian writer re-creates his country's pioneer past with originality, not to mention Aboriginality.
A scarecrow of a man stumbles up to three children playing at the edge of a mid-19th century Australian frontier settlement and stutters, ''Do not shoot. I am a B-b-british object.'' The most bumptious of the young group marches the frightened visitor home, where he is taken in as a stray. Speaking English as a forgotten language, he explains that his name is Gemmy Fairley, that he was a cabin boy shipwrecked off...
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