Michael Adams Michael Adams i(11348040 works by)
Born: Established:
c
India,
c
South Asia, South and East Asia, Asia, ;
Gender: Male
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Works By

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1 y separately published work icon Hanging Ned Kelly : Elijah Upjohn, the Hangmen and the Underbelly of Colonial Australia Michael Adams , Mulgrave : Affirm Press , 2023 27126454 2023 single work biography

'When it came time to hang Ned Kelly, the job fell to shit-shoveller-turned-quack-doctor-turned-drunken-chicken-thief Elijah Upjohn. Such is life indeed.

'Hanging Ned Kelly looks at the life and demise of Australia's most famous antihero from a new perspective: that of the vagabond who finally put the noose around his neck. Elijah Upjohn was the latest in a long line of flogging hangmen allowed to run amok because they'd do the dirty work that let officials keep their hands clean. Upjohn and his fellow boozing bunglers were so hated they were hunted by angry mobs, causing one writer to ask, 'Who shall hang the hangman?'

'In Hanging Ned Kelly, Elijah Upjohn's tale becomes the rusty scalpel that slices open the underbelly of colonial Victoria. Written by Michael Adams, creator of the acclaimed podcast Forgotten Australia and author of The Murder Squad, this is an odyssey into an infernal underworld seething with serial killers, clueless cops, larrikin vigilantes and furious fallen women. Looming over them all: the depraved hangmen paid to execute convicted men and women in Melbourne before it was marvellous.'(Publication summary)
1 The Edges Michael Adams , 2020 single work essay
— Appears in: Swamphen : A Journal of Cultural Ecology , no. 7 2020; 'My personal introduction to Debbie was through learning about writing: twenty years ago she stood in front of a diverse group of postgrads and read from work in progress. She lyrically described driving across the Alligator River Flood Plain in Kakadu National Park in the late afternoon with an Aboriginal man, who says a version of ‘Hey Debbie, if you look out the window to the east you’ll see a cool thing’. She looks out the window of the Toyota, and the dark edge of Burrungkuy – the Nourlangie Rock escarpment – is lit up with tiny glittering sparkles of light. The man laughingly explains that it is tourists’ camera flashes, as they photograph the sunset from one of the most famous Indigenous rock art galleries in the world.'  (Introduction)
1 Friday Essay: the Cultural Meanings of Wild Horses Michael Adams , 2017 single work essay
— Appears in: The Conversation , 17 October 2017; The Conversation , 16 January 2018;

'I am walking quietly through the forest. As I reach the edge of the trees there is a snort and a staccato of hoofbeats, and four horses materialise only metres in front of me: a foal, two mares and a dark stallion. The stallion, ears pricked, tosses his head and prances forward. As I crouch to pick up a branch, the stallion wheels and gallops off with the group. They hurdle an old stock fence, and almost as soon as their hoofs touch down, another big grey stallion comes towards them over the hill.' (Introduction)
1 y separately published work icon Salt Blood Michael Adams , 2020 11348050 2017 single work podcast 'It is quiet and cool and dark blue. At this depth the pressure on my body is double what it is at the surface: my heartbeat has slowed, blood has started to withdraw from my extremities and move into the space my compressed lungs have created. I am ten metres underwater on a breath-hold dive, suspended at the point of neutral buoyancy where the weight of the water above cancels my body’s natural flotation. I turn head down, straighten my body, kick gently, and begin to fall with the unimpeded gravitational pull to the heart of the Earth.' (Introduction)
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