Issue Details: First known date: 2013... 2013 A Gum-Tree Exile : Randolph Bedford in Italy
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Randolph Bedford (1868–1941) was an Australian journalist, politician and novelist, a lifelong socialist despite making a small fortune from mining. He was among the ‘brain drain’ of Australians at the turn of last century, who hoped to emulate Melba’s success in England. Many of his contemporaries, such as Henry Lawson, experienced disillusion and poverty, and returned home. Bedford differed in his versatility, and also his profound rejection of the British Empire. He could not sell his novels initially, nor his speculations to British investors, but was able to put his mining experience to use in Italy. There he became one of the first Australians to fall in love with the country.

'His attraction to Italy was partly aesthetic, its artistic glories, but also because it reinforced his sentimental Australian nationalism. He saw similarities in landscape, and also in climate. He wrote despatches back to the Bulletin called ‘Explorations in Civilization’, which became a book in 1916. The subtitle was ‘An Australian in Exile’, reversing the ‘Exiles We’, of the first settlers, with their nostalgia for Britain. In contrast, Bedford saw nothing good in London and the Empire. He disliked it upon first sight, and his irreverence and socialist sympathies had no place in the conservative British investment milieu.

'Bedford would sell two novels in Britain, via Henry Lawson (whom he helped in London) and his literary agent J. B. Pinker. But he returned home, certain expatriate life was not for him, and devoted his energies to Australia. His real success was in Explorations in Civilization, superb travel-writing, perhaps his best work. It shows his love for his country being reinforced through the perceived similarities between it and Italy, a second homeland for him. He even paid its people his highest compliment: that they were his preferred settlers for Australia.'

Source: Abstract.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Portal Australians Abroad vol. 10 no. 1 Juliana De Nooy (editor), 2013 11172608 2013 periodical issue

    'Although commonly characterized as an immigrant nation, Australia has been shaped just as importantly by the overseas journeys of its people, and the liminal experiences thus provided have not only been self-defining and defining of the other, but at times nation-defining. This special issue proposes a multidisciplinary analysis of Australian travellers and expatriates past and present: the reasons for and destinations of their travel, its impact on their identity, the roles they play, their writings and reflections, their linguistic and intercultural competence.

    'Clusters of travellers to particular destinations give rise to narrative patterns which solidify into templates, the narrative equivalent of the beaten track. The essays that follow highlight both discursive grooves and off-piste accounts that challenge the patterns. In both cases, the emphasis in the essays is on the travellers’ active engagement in the experience and on their negotiation of existing discourses. For even those who follow the trail invest it with personal meanings.'

    Source: Introduction.

    2013
Last amended 11 May 2017 09:26:37
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