Cirrus@Austlit

'Under the name of Leonard Louvain, [The Lost Explorer] presumed to tell of the supposed finding of Leichhardt in the centre of Australia. The description was based upon Charles Sturt's Expedition into Central Australia; but the story itself was largely made up of adventures with the blacks'.

Source: Australian Literature from its Beginnings to 1935, v.2.

'The Golden Lake is the story of three white men and an Aborigine led by Dick Hardwicke who set off in search of a great lost civilisation beyond the treacherous deserts of Western Australia. At the outset, Dick's cousin, Archie, senses that spiritual forces are stirring in this wilderness. The heroes know they are on the right trail when they discover a cave full of exotic golden sculptures and conclude that they were caved long ago by a superior race who dwelt on the shores of an idyllic inland sea.'

Source: Lemuria and Australian Dreams of an Inland Sea

'A lost kingdom is found in a hidden oasis of forest in the outback. Its strange animal human inhabitants are the products of miscegenation between a lost Aboriginal tribe and kangaroos.'

Source: Seed, David. A Companion to Science Fiction. Blackwell Publishing, 2005.

'A Haunt of Jinkarras deals with the discovery of a primordial race that dwells entirely underground.' 

Source: L.W. Currey, Inc. https://www.lwcurrey.com/pages/books/167311/ernest-favenc/the-last-of-six-tales-of-the-austral-tropics 

'Initially written for The Queenslander as The Burning Mountain of the Interior, this 'Australian tale of adventure' sees a party of explorers travel into the desert in search of gold, some alleged hot springs, and a volcano. The group also hopes to discover the fate of Ludwig Leichhardt expedition. 'After some travail, they discover an unknown race located in a fine-looking country commanding vast gold reserves. The members of this race are distinct from the Aborigines around them, and constitute the degraded remnants of an ancient civilisation once occupying the Australian interior. By the end of the novel, this unknown race is destroyed by [the] erupting volcano, and the explorers are left to inherit their wealth of gold.'

Source: Bellanta, Fabulating the Australian Desert.

In the following romance I have endeavoured to associate the tradition of De Gonneville's visit to Australia with the historical fact of the wreck of the Batavia, and the marooning of two of the mutineers. The wreck of the Batavia is perhaps one of the most murderous tragedies that ever happened in any part of the world. One of the ruffians confessed, before being hanged, to having killed and assisted to kill, twenty-five defenceless people. '

A lost-race romance story. Typically, in this popular late-nineteenth century genre, male English adventurers travel beyond the edges of the known world and have their masculine and racial identities tested, but ultimately affirmed, in encounters with a lost race, remnants of an ancient civilisation often led by a female chief.

Source: Carter, David. How people have imagined Queensland. Queensland Historical Atlas, 2010.

This volume is a romance set against the backdrop of the wilds of Australia. Dick Halwood meets up with the Hatter, who tells the story of a strange land in the Australian desert where an odd yellow woman lives, ruling a band of aged pygmies. Tor Ymmothe, the yellow woman, is the last Queen of Lemuria. She has been condemned to live alone for thousands of years in the caves, paying the price for the arrogance of her race which was destroyed. She guards the body of a young princess, who has lain in a comatose state for thousands of years, waiting for her own true love to appear. Halwood discovers where the princess' body lies. Upon seeing her face, he learns she is the woman who had appeared to him in a vision. Join Halwood in his adventurous quest for true love.

'Anne Bedo is unhappily married. Her husband, Elias, is an abusive drunk who cruelly mistreats her, and she decides she can't take it any more. While traveling by ship, Anne decides to make her escape. Making it appear as though she has gone mad and thrown herself overboard, she instead disembarks in disguise with her friend, the Aboriginal youth Kombo. Anne and Kombo venture through dangerous, unexplored country, braving the murderous tribes and cannibals, as she seeks to put distance between herself and her persecutor. During her travels, she meets up with Danish explorer Eric Hansen, and together, they make an astonishing discovery. Deep in the Australian wilderness lives a tribe of "Red Men," the Aca, part of the ancient Mayan race. Can Anne, Eric, and Kombo survive the myriad threats posed by savage cannibals, the Aca's "Death-Stone," and the vengeance of Elias Bedo? A "lost race" adventure novel in the tradition of H. Rider Haggard, Rosa Praed's "Fugitive Anne" (1902) also confronts important issues of the day, including colonialism and the difficulties faced by women trapped in bad marriages.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Valancourt edition).

'Bob Wentworth, 18, and Jack Armstrong, 16, leave their work at the Clyde Engineering Works and set off to Australia with Mr Mackay in search of gold. The story moves from the goldfields of WA across the centre of Australia. The character of Mackay is based on Macdonald himself. He is engimatic, an able fighter, and a sensitive flautist who has a broad general knowledge (which he is not averse to imparting freely) and is moved to tears by music.'

(Oxford Companion to Australian Children's Literature 271).

'A light coloured tribe of aboriginals [sic] is supposed to exist, the descendants of ship-wrecked European mariners who, like the mutineers of the Bounty, married aboriginal women, whose descendants in time might therefore almost be designated Australian demi-semi-aboriginal [sic] Pitcairn Islanders.

'When one finds that the daughter and the adopted daughter of a bush shanty-keeper are two charming girls whose adventures bulk largely in the book, and that, in the wonderful and mysterious tribe, a half-caste girl has reared an emu which she can direct by a signal heard many miles away, and which emu with its mate arrives when wanted by her, and on the back of which she rides away as if on the wind, one recognises the Munchausen character of, at all events, one phase of this wonderfully imaginative tale.'

Source: Rev. of The Silver Queen, by William Sylvester Walker. The Queenslander 29 Jan 1910.

'When two amateur archaeologists in Australia uncover a hidden high-tech tomb they inadvertently awaken a millennia-old superhuman. Does the beautiful Earani mean to save humanity or destroy it?

'A country farmer uncovers remnants of an advanced civilization that contain a woman, asleep in suspended animation for two thousand years. Upon awakening the woman Earani teleports herself into the office of the Australian Prime Minister and reveals her plans to take over the world – through mind control.

'An advanced civilization from the impossibly distant past is about to be resurrected in rural Australia. What dark secrets does it hold? Is it possible for a man to deny the requests of the world's most beautiful and intelligent woman? To fight a relentless and appealing logic no matter how horrific the consequences?

'It's rare that a novel captures a country's soul. How is it possible that a novel written almost a hundred years ago can speak to us so deeply of things that disturb and torment Australians even today? Out of the Silence is the most perplexing of novels, where during the course of the story your expectations and assumptions are turned 180 degrees.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.